
Class EjU^ 



Book_._C£3_ 



I 



/U. 




MRS. BENEDICT ARNOLD AND HER ELDEST SON. 



From the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence now in the possession of the Historical 
Society of Pennsyhania. 



ROMANTIC DAYS 
IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 



BOOKS BY 

MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD 



Old Boston Days and Ways 



Romantic Days in Old Boston 



ROMANTIC DAYS 

IN THE 

EARLY REPUBLIC 



BY 

MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD 

AUTHOR OF " OLD BOSTON DATS AND WAYS," 
"GOETHE AND HIS WOMAN FRIENDS," ETC. 



With Numerous Illustrations 



BOSTON 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1912 



LiLf 
8f 






Copyright, 1912, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 

All rights reserved 



Published, October, 1912 






\S'^ 



^-xX> 



THE COLONIAL PRESS 
C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, TJ. S. A. 



©CI.A3'^,^'l95 



— (guizaL 



FOREWORD 

All the visitors to America, during and just 
after the Revolution, wrote with enthusiasm, 
upon their return home, of the hospitality which 
they here enjoyed and of the beautiful women 
who administered it. Boston, New York, 
Philadelphia and the Southern cities each cher- 
ishes fondly — so far as its own traditions go — 
the memory of that gracious era and of those 
identified with it. But how little Bostonians 
know of early New York, how dense is the ig- 
norance of Philadelphians concerning the tradi- 
tions of New Orleans! Yet would it not add 
materially to our rich heritage as Americans, 
if the local history and noble heroes of other 
cities than our own evoked our keen enthusiasm.^ 

The author, however, who sets out, in a single 
book, to promote this admirable end is con- 
fronted at once with a very great diflSculty; 
that of selection. For no Philadelphian wants 
to read details about early Baltimore — how- 
ever admirable he might find in any book ex- 
haustive treatment of his own dear city. Hap- 
pily, each of the cities here studied has been 
found to possess some story or some institution 



viii FOREWORD 

of its own which might well become a part of 
common knowledge in this young and lusty land 
of ours. America can use more heroes, too, 
than we are wont to think. Jefferson and Andrew 
Jackson should not be mere names in this year 
of Progressivism; Abigail Adams and Theodosia 
Burr ought to be the fond familiar friends of 
awakening American womanhood. 

Of course, the diaries, histories, reminiscences 
and letters consulted in the preparation of a 
book of this kind bulk very large; so large that 
their mere enumeration would cover many 
pages. For the most part, therefore, acknowl- 
edgments have been made in the body of the 
book. But I wish to mention here my gratitude 
to the Houghton Mifflin Company for various 
quotations from works which they control; to 
Charles Scribner's Sons; publishers of Margaret 
Bayard Smith's First Forty Years of Washing- 
ton Society; to Harper and Brothers for their 
courtesy in permitting the use of some anec- 
dotes first printed in their publications; to 
the Century Company for similar courtesies, 
and to G. P. Putnam's Sons for several cita- 
tions from their edition of Washington Irving's 
works. 

To individuals who have aided me by their 
counsel and by the loan of family or much- 
cherished portraits; to writers who have given 
me the benefit of their ripe wisdom and scholarly 



FOREWORD ix 

research; to librarians who have gladly lent 
time and interest my warm gratitude is also 
given. One of the great joys which comes to an 
author in the preparation of a work of this kind 
is the discovery that America, even today, has 
something of the spirit of that Cooperative 
Commonwealth towards which the Reformer 
yearns — lingering remnants, very likely, of 
the team-play brotherliness which made possible 
the early Republic. 

M. C. C. 

Boston, Massachusetts, 1912. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGH 

Foreword vii 

I. Philadelphia 1 

II. New York 73 

III. Washington 156 

IV. Baltimore 243 

V. Charleston 291 

VI. Richmond and Some Famous Virginian 

Homes 338 

VII. New Orleans 379 

VIII. Boston and Some Other Cities of New 

England 397 

Index 433 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Mrs. Benedict Arnold and her Eldest Son Frontispiece '-''' 

Ftoth the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence now in the possession of 
the Historical Society of Permsyhania. 

PACINQ PAGE 

Major Andre 20 '^ 

From a painting by himself. 

Second Street, Philadelphia, about 1800 ... 21 > 

Congress Hall and Chestnut Street Theatre, Phila- 
delphia, ABOUT 1800 21 ^^ 

Mrs. Major William Jackson 44 '^ 

From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart now tVi the possession of the Penn- 
sylvania Academy of Fine Arts. 

Third Street, Phil.\delphia, about 1800 . . . 45 ^' 
High Street, Philadelphia, about 1800 . . . 45 > 
Miss Sally McKean 52 • 

Who became the Marchioness de Casa Yrujo. From the painting by 
Gilbert Stuart in the possession of Mrs. Thomas McKean of 
Philadelphia. 

Mus. Walter Stewart 52 ■, 

From the painting by Charles Wilson Peale. 

Sarah Frankun Bache 53 1- 

Dr. Caspar Wistar 53 "' 

Fraunces' Tavern in 1867 74 

The athenaeum Washington of Stuart . . . 75 ■ 

From the original in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 

Martha Washington, from the Portrait by James 
Savage 86 

From the portrait by James Savage in the possession of Brooks Adams, 
Quincy, Massachusetts. 

Houses opposite Bowling Green on Broadway . 87 

Macomb House, Washington's second New York 
Residence 87 

The Merchants' Exchange, New York, about 1830 92 

From a drawing by C. Burton. 

Mrs. Chauncey Goodrich 93 

From a miniature in the possession of Charles A. Brinley of Phila- 
delphia. 



xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACIXa PAGE 

Mrs. John Jay 98 ' 

From the painting by Daniel Huntington, enlarged from a miniature 
in a bracelet. 

City Hall and its Park, New York, about 1835 . 99 '■' 

From an old print. 

Old St. Paul's, New York 110 

Aaron Burr Ill 

From a painting attributed to Qilbert Stuart in the possession of 
Princeton University. 

The West Front of Trinity Church, New York . 120 

From an old print. 

Thomas Paine in 1792 121 !' 

Park Theatre, New York 130 '■' 

From a drawing by C. Burton. 

John Jacob Astor 131 ' 

From the portrait by Oilbert Stuart. 

William Cullen Bryant in 1825 148 

After a portrait by S. F. B. Morse. 

Tammany Hall in 1830 149 ^ 

From Valentine's Manual. 

Alexander Hamilton 158 ' 

From the portrait by Trumbull in the possession of the Yale Uni- 
versity School of Fine Arts. 

Thomas Jefferson 159 '^ 

Mrs. Martha Jefferson Randolph .... 176 ^ 

From the portrait by Stuart in the possession of Mrs. Algernon Coo- 
lidge of Boston. 

Dolly Madison . . • 177 '-^ 

From a miniature by James Peale in the possession of her great- 
niece, Miss Lucia B. Cutta of Boston. 

James Madison 184 , 

From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart in the possession of Bowdoin 
College. 

Home of Washington Irving at Sunnyside . . .185 
Mrs. James Monroe 200 

From the miniature painted by Send in Paris in 1794. 

John Quincy Adams 201 

From the portrait by Leslie in the possession of Brooks Adams, 
Quincy, Massachusetts. 

Mrs. John Quincy Adams 210 y 

From the portrait by Leslie in the possession of Brooks Adams, 
Quincy, Massachiisetts. 

A View of the Capitol at Washington during Jack- / 

son's Administration 211 '^ 

From, an old print. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv 

FACING PAGE 

Madame Jerome Bonaparte 258 

From the miniature by Augustin, made in Paris in 1814, notv in the 
possession of Edward Biddle, of Philadelphia. 

Baltimore Street, Baltimore, in Stage - Coach Days 259 
Interior of the Catholic Cathedral, Baltimore, 
ABOUT 1830 282 

From an old print. 

The Battle Monument, Baltimore, about 1835 . 283 - 

From an old print. 

Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780 .... 292 
Charleston, South Carolina, about 1830 . . . 293 ^ 
Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard 312 '^ 

From the painting by Copley in the possession of the Boston Museum of 
Fine Arts. 

Theodosia Burr 313 v 

From, the portrait by St. Memin. 

Harman Blennerhassett 326- 

From a miniature in the possession of Dr. Francis Coffin Martin of 
Boston. 

The Nag's Head Portrait of Theodosia Burr"" . . 327 ' 

From the original in the possession of Mrs. John P. Overman, Eliza- 
beth City, North Carolina. 

St. John's Church, Richmond 338 

The Capitol at Richmond 339 

From an old print. 

H-.NRY Clay 346 ■ 

From the portrait by S. F. B. Morse in the possession of the Metropoli- 
tan Museum of Art, New York. 

'feB MOKTJMENTAL ChURCH, RICHMOND .... 347 
From an old print. 

Thk Allan Mansion, Richmond 354 

In which Edgar Allan Poe lived as a lad. 

Washington's J'omb \t Mount Vernon . . . 355 
Eleanor Parke Custis 366 

From a painting by Gilbert Stuart in the possession of Mrs. Edivin 
A. S. 'Lupins of .'ew York. 

Mount Vernon . 367 

The Archbishopric, Olde-"^ House in New Orleans . 380 

Jackson Sql .re, New Orli:. ns 381 

The Old French M.irket, New Orleans . . . 392 ' 

Andrew Jackson 393 

From the portrait b, ily in the possession of the Corcoran Art Gal- 
lery, Washinglo 

Parlor op the Dorothy Q. House, Quincy, Mass. . 404 - 



xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

Governor Langdon House, Portsmouth, N. H. . . 405 

Guest Chamber of the Longfellow House, Port- 
land, Me 412 

Kitchen of the Longfellow House, Portland, Me. 413 

Mrs. R. C. Derby 416 

From the miniature by Malbone in the possession of the Metro- 
politan Museum of Art, New York. 

Mrs. Edward Blake . 417 

From the miniature by Malbone in the possession of Miss Julia 
Robins, Boston. 

Boston Common and the State House, 1830 . . 424 

From the painting by George Harvey in the possession of the Bos- 
tonian Society. 

Daniel Webster 425 

From the portrait by Stuart in the possession of George Fred Williams, 
Dedham, Massachusetts 



ROMANTIC DAYS IN THE 
EARLY REPUBLIC 



CHAPTER I 



PHILADKLPHIA 



PHILADELPHIA is the finest town, the 
i- si built and tlie most wealthy in the 
- ^-d States," stoutly maintained Bris- 
so^ ' 'ik' (1788) in his naive volume of 

The time to which our author refers 
; iurse, that of the early Republic; but 
^uasiiiUch as a good deal of Philadelphia's social 
prestige had been carried over from the days of 
the British Occupation, — days in which Major 
Andre and Peggy Shippen together participated 
in the Mischianza of illustrious memory, — 
it seems worth while to tell briefly the story of 
that brilliant affair and to restate clearly the 
known facts concerning Mrs. Arnold's relation 
to the clever young British ofPcer. 

Peggy Shippen Arnold certainly realized to 
the full the delectable desire expressed by 



^ ROMANTIC DAYS 

Ibsen's neurotic Hedda, when she exclaimed, 
" Oh, that I might have my fingers in the des- 
tiny of a man! " History, to be sure, pretty 
unanimously acquits Andre's cotillion partner 
of any wicked complicity in what afterwards 
happened. Nor is there the least evidence that 
what Andre felt for pretty Peggy was more than 
the pleasure any gallant young man takes in the 
witty companionship of a dainty maiden who is 
suflBciently his junior. At the time of the Mis- 
chianza, indeed, Andre's heart had not really 
recovered from the blow dealt him by Honora 
Sneyd when she chose to become the second wife 
of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (and the step- 
mother of Maria Edgeworth, the novelist) rather 
than accept the portionless hand of her hand- 
some young adorer. There are extant some 
letters written by young Andre to a giri who was 
the friend both of Honora and of himself, in 
which there are frequent references to the 
scantiness of his family fortunes and to the 
bearing of this fact on his prospects of future 
happiness. 

Almost the only tangible evidence that there 
ever had been a fortune in the Andre family 
rested, it would seem, on an old coach drawn by 
" two long tail nags." And as frankly as he 
confesses his poverty young Andre avows the 
hopelessness of his affection for Honora. In 
one letter he writes, " My zephyrs are wafted 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 3 

through cracks in the wainscott; for murmur- 
ing streams I have dirty kennels; for bleating 
flocks grunting pigs — and squaUing birds that 
incessantly warble!" Not a favorable spot, 
obviously, for the cultivation of the muse. No 
wonder he soon came to feel that, as a change, 
he could even enter trade. On November 1, 
1769, he wrote, " I have now completely sub- 
dued my aversT n to the profession of a mer- 
chant, and he,' ai time to acquire an inclina- 
tion for it. iifet, God forbid I should ever love 
what I am to make the object of my attention, 
that vile trash which I c*^^^ not for but only as 
it maj be a future means of procuring the bless- 
ing of my soul. Thus all my mercantile calcu- 
lations go to the tune of dear Honora. When an 
impertinent consciousness whispers in my ear 
that I am not of the right stuff for a merchant 
I draw my Honora's picture from my bosom 
and tha sight of that dear Talisman so inspirits 
my industry that no toil appears oppressive." 
It was this same picture of Honora, painted 
by himself, and preserved in a locket, that Andre 
saved from his captors (by hiding it in his 
mouth) when, having surrendered to Mont- 
gomery (at St. John's in 1775), he with the 
other prisoners of war was commanded to strip 
for examination. Yet Honora had then for two 
years been the wife of the fascinating Edge- 
worth — and it had probably been in the hope 



4 ROMANTIC DAYS 

of drowning in an adventurous career in America 
the sorrow of her loss that Andre joined the 
British army over here. Following his capture 
by Montgomery, he was conveyed to Lancaster, 
Pennsylvania, where for four months he was 
confined as a prisoner in the house of Caleb Cope. 
Then he was transferred to Carlisle and, after 
that, was in short order exchanged and made a 
member of Sir Henry Clinton's military family, 
with promotion from his rank as captain to that 
of major. 

It was, however, Andre's social gifts rather 
than any military skill he may have possessed 
which made him a favorite in Philadelphia. 
He was graceful and handsome, could draw, 
paint, and write poetry, — and he had chariaing 
manners. He seemed, indeed, particularly en- 
dowed to plan and carry through the famous 
social function which Howe's officers designed 
to mark their chief's departure from the Quaker 
City and to rebuke his recall to England. In 
an elaborate letter, written to a friend in Lon- 
don and published several years after Andre's 
death, we see reflected the young man's delight 
in this extraordinary fete which has ever since 
been regarded as the high-water mark in Phila- 
delphia's social history.^ 

As the title of the fete impHes, several differ- 
ent kinds of entertainment were included in this 

^ In the Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1788. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 5 

splendid celebration of May 18, 1778. The 
initial feature was a grand regatta in three divis- 
ions. First came the Ferret galley, on board of 
which were several general officers and ladies; 
then the Hussar galley, bearing Sir William and 
Lord Howe, Sir Henry Clinton, their suite and 
many ladies, while the Cornwallis galley, with 
General Knyphausen and suite, three British 
generals and sc^- -al more fair ladies brought up 
in the rear. In front of each galley went three 
flatboats with bands of music; five flatboats, 
lined with green cloth and filled with ladies and 
gentlemen attended each side of the large ships, 
and these were in turn attended by several 
barges to keep off the swarm of boats in the river. 
Colors and streamers floated gaily from the 
participating ships, while all the vessels lying at 
anchor near by were also magnificently deco- 
rated. 

The rendezvous for this interesting regatta- 
pageant was at Knight's Wharf, at the northern 
extremity of the city. At half-past four the 
company embarked, floating slowly down the 
river to the strains of appropriate music until 
they arrived opposite Market Wharf, where all 
rested their oars and, in obedience to a pre- 
viously arranged signal, '* God Save the King " 
was sung and cheered by all hands to the echo. 
The landing was at the Old Fort, a little south 
of the town, and thence, after a due ritual of 



6 ROMANTIC DAYS 

salutes, the company from the boats proceeded 
to Walnut Grove, the mansion of Joseph Whar- 
ton, through an avenue formed by two files of 
grenadiers, each supported by a line of light 
horse, to the building prepared for the next 
feature. Here was " discovered " a spacious 
lawn lined with troops and prepared for the ex- 
hibition of a tilt and tournament. Two pavilions 
had been provided for the ladies, with seats 
rising one above the other, the places of 
honor on the front seats having bec-n allot led to a 
group of maidens dressed as Turkish princesses 
and wearing in their turbans the favors for which 
the gallant knights were presently to contend. 

A blare of trumpets sounded in t]ie distance. 
And now a band of knights in ancient habits 
of white and red silk, mounted on gray horses 
caparisoned in the same colors and attended by 
squires on foot, by heralds and by trumpeters, 
entered the lists. Lord Cathcart was chief of 
these knights and appeared in honor of Miss 
Auchmuty. One squire bore his lance, another 
his shield, and two coal-black slaves, dressed in 
blue and white silk with silver clasps on their 
bare necks and arms, held his stirrups. After 
making a circuit of the square and saluting the 
ladies, the members of his band ranged them- 
selves in line with the pavilion graced by the 
ladies of their device. Then the herald, after a 
flourish of trumpets, proclaimed a challenge 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 7 

and asserted the superiority in wit, beauty, and 
accomplishment of the ladies of the Blended 
Rose, whose claims would now be defended ac- 
cording to the ancient laws of chivalry. 

Thrice was the challenge repeated ere another 
herald and trumpeters, advancing from the 
opposite side of the square, proclaimed defiance 
in the name of the knights of the Burning Moun- 
tain. Black and orange were the colors of these 
servitors, while their chief. Captain Watson, ap- 
pearing in honor of Miss Franks, bore for his 
device a heart with a wreath of roses, and for 
his ;ii->:tj Love and Glory. Tliis band also 
rede round the lists and drew up in front of the 
White Knights. Then the gauntlet was thrown 
down, lifted — and the encounter was on ! For 
some minutes all fought, and then the two chiefs, 
spurring to the center, engaged in a single com- 
bat which grew more and more fierce until the 
marshal of the field, rushing between them, de- 
clared that the ladies both of the Blended Rose 
aiicf of the Burning Mountain were satisfied with 
the proofs of love and valor already given and 
commanded their knights to desist. The bands 
filed off in different directions, bowing low, as 
they passed the pavilion, to the beautiful ladies 
there ensconced. 

The whole company then marched in proces- 
sion, through triumphal arches built in the 
Tuscan order, to a garden on the other side, and 



8 ROMANTIC DAYS 

ascended to a spacious hall painted in imitation 
of Siena marble. Here were tea and other re- 
freshments. And now the valiant knights, kneel- 
ing down, received from the fair fingers of their 
chosen ones the favors which they had won in 
the tournament. In the ballroom, where dan- 
cing continued until ten o'clock, were eighty -five 
mirrors reflecting the light from thirty-four 
branches fitted with wax candles; and to lend 
further brilliance to the scene there was soon a 
magnificent display of fireworks. 

Supper, however, was the crowning glory of 
the day. This was served at the stroke of mid- 
night, when large folding doors, which had 
hitherto been concealed, were suddenly thrown 
open, revealing a splendid and spacious hall 
richly painted and brilliantly illuminated, the 
central feature of which was a table set out, 
according to Major Andre's account, with four 
hundred and thirty covers and twelve hundred 
dishes ! At the close of the feast the herald and 
trumpeters of the Blended Rose entered the 
room, and proclaimed, first, the health of the 
king and royal family, then the health of the 
knights and their ladies. Each toast was ac- 
companied by a flourish of music in good old 
medieval style. After which the company re- 
turned to the ballroom and dancing continued 
till four o'clock. Very weary the Mischianza 
belles must have been when they finally reached 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 9 

home. For this entertainment had made a 
record for length as well as for elegance! 

The next day the mirrors and lusters borrowed 
from Philadelphia's leading citizens were quietly 
returned, and very shortly Sir William Howe 
took his departure. But the pageant given in 
the English general's honor caused tongues to 
wag for many a month in England as well as 
in the camps of the American army. Naturally 
the patriot generals, who had been enduring 
bitter privations in the cause of independence, 
were most cutting in their comments on the 
extravagance of the celebration, and one cer- 
tainly sympathizes with the feeling which, on 
July 12, prompted General Wayne to write, 
" Tell those Philadelphia ladies who attended 
Howe's assemblies and levees that the heavenly, 
sweet, pretty, redcoats — the accomplished gen- 
tlemen of the guards and grenadiers, have been 
humbled on the plains of Monmouth. The 
knights of the Blended Roses and of the Burn- 
ing Mount have resigned their laurels to rebel 
officers, who will lay them at the feet of those 
virtuous daughters of America who cheerfully 
gave up ease and affluence in a city for liberty 
and peace of mind in a cottage." 

Though all the loyalist maidens of Philadel- 
phia — the Chews, the Whites, the Craigs, the 
Redmans and the Burds — had a share in the 
festivities of that glorious day, the most promi- 



10 ROMANTIC DAYS 

nent girl in the fete was the beautiful Miss 
Margaret Shippen, who was soon to become the 
wife of Benedict Arnold. Arnold had begun 
life as a druggist in New Haven, Connecticut, 
not far from Norwich, the town of his birth, 
and there had married an estimable woman who 
died about the time the war began. Though of 
a reckless and adventurous nature, the traitor 
seems to have been tenderly devoted to this 
wife, and it was perhaps the sorrow of her loss 
which first turned him definitely towards the 
crooked ways which were to prove his undoing. 
Sparks argues from the constant affection felt 
for the man by his gentle sister, Hannah Arnold, 
that there existed in his domestic character 
better traits than could be inferred from his 
public conduct. Other writers, pressing further 
this same line of reasoning, find in a fond hus- 
band's desire to indulge the extravagance of a 
charming young wife the explanation of Arnold's 
treachery. This, however, seems to me to be 
working too hard the injunction, *' Cherchez la 
femme! " Arnold was a spendthrift before ever 
he met Margaret Shippen. 

But it was perhaps unfortunate that a man of 
his weak will and impressionable nature should 
have been put in command at Philadelphia in 
the wake of the Mischianza and at a time when 
only the utmost integrity and the finest tact 
could have enabled any commander to give en- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 11 

tire satisfaction. Stories began very early to 
be whispered about to his discredit. One set of 
people said that it was nothing short of a scandal, 
in view of the distressed condition of the country, 
for Arnold to be living as he was and to be court- 
ing the favor of Tories. Another set charged 
him with extortion and with commercial specu- 
lations of doubtful repute. 

The note of extravagance and display, which 
had been struck in Philadelphia before Howe's 
departure, was not suffered to die away under 
Arnold. He soon established himself at Mount 
Pleasant, once characterized by John Adams as 
" the most magnificent seat in Pennsylvania," 
furnished it expensively, drove a coach and four, 
and gave splendid entertainments, to which were 
always invited the friends of the lovely Miss 
Shippen. He had fallen in love with the Tory 
belle at first sight and, within three months, was 
declaring his passion thus eloquently: 

" Dear Madam: Twenty times have I taken 
up my pen to write to you and as often has my 
trembling hand refused to obey the dictates of 
my heart — a heart which, though calm and 
serene amid the clashing of arms and all the din 
and horrors of war, trembles with diffidence and 
the fear of giving offence when it attempts to 
address you on a subject so important to its 
happiness. Dear madam, your charms have 



12 ROMANTIC DAYS 

lighted up a flame in my bosom which can never 
be extinguished; your heavenly image is too 
deeply impressed ever to be effaced. My pas- 
sion is not founded on personal charms only: 
that sweetness of disposition and goodness of 
heart — that sentiment and sensibility which 
so strongly mark the character of the lovely 
Miss P. Shippen — render her amiable beyond 
expression, and will ever retain the heart she 
has once captivated. 

" On you alone my happiness depends. And 
will you doom me to languish in despair .^^ Shall 
I expect no return to the most sincere, ardent 
and disinterested passion.^ Do you feel no pity 
in your gentle bosom for the man who would 
die to make you happy ? May I presume to hope 
it is not impossible I may make a favourable 
impression on your heart? Friendship and es- 
teem you acknowledge. Dear Peggy! suffer 
that heavenly bosom (which cannot know itself 
the cause of pain without a sympathetic pang) 
to expand with a sensation, more soft, more 
tender than friendship. A union of hearts is 
undoubtedly necessary to happiness. But give 
me leave to observe that true and permanent 
happiness is seldom the effect of an alliance 
formed on a romantic passion, where fancy gov- 
erns more than judgment. Friendship and es- 
teem, founded on the merit of the object, is the 
most certain basis to found a lasting happiness 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 13 

upon. And when there is a tender and ardent 
passion on one side, and friendship and esteem 
on the other, the heart (unHke yours) must be 
callous to every tender sentiment if the taper of 
love is not lighted up at the flame. 

" I am sensible your prudence and the affec- 
tion you bear your amiable and tender parents 
forbid your giving encouragement to the ad- 
dresses of anyone without their approbation. 
Pardon me, dear madam, for disclosing a passion 
I could no longer confine in my tortured bosom. 
I have presumed to write to your papa and have 
requested his sanction to my addresses. Suffer 
me to hope for your approbation. Consider be- 
fore you doom me to misery which I have not 
deserved but by loving you too extravagantly. 
Consult your own happiness, and, if incompat- 
ible, forget there is so unhappy a wretch; for 
may I perish if I would give you one moment's 
inquietude to purchase the greatest possible 
felicity to myself! Whatever my fate may be 
my most ardent wish is for your happiness, and 
my latest breath will be to implore the blessings 
of Heaven on the idol and only wish of my soul. 

" Adieu, dear madam, and believe me unalter- 
ably your sincere admirer and devoted humble 
servant, 

" B. Arnold. 

" September 25, 1778 
*' Miss Peggy Shippen." 



14 ROMANTIC DAYS 

According to some authorities the Shippen 
family were most distressed that their beloved 
Peggy returned the love of Arnold. This, how- 
ever, " not so much from political feeling as from 
distrust of the man, objection to his origin and 
dislike of his private character so far as it was 
known. Arnold was not, in fact, a gentleman. 
His birth and early education were low; and 
his peddling and smuggling-trade with the is- 
lands, his traffic in cattle and horses could have 
improved neither his manners nor his morals." 
Yet there is extant a letter written by Peggy's 
grandfather, Ed ward Shippen, Sr., which contains 
quite a jovial allusion to the prospect of wel- 
coming soon as a member of his family " Gen- 
eral Arnold, a fine gentleman ! " ^ 

Perhaps the most astounding thing about this 
whole alliance was the ease with which Arnold 
acquitted himself in the matter of a proper {?) 
marriage settlement. Here his trickiness served 
him in good stead. For events proved that what 
he really settled upon the woman he was to take 
for a bride was a large mortgage held against the 
estate of Mt. Pleasant. This incumbrance, which 
had so reduced the amount of money necessary to 
be paid down for the place as to put it within 
Arnold's purchasing power, subsequently cut out 
altogether Peggy Shippen's interest in the estate. 

1 Thomas Balch, in Letters and Papers Relating Chiefly to the 
Provincial Histonj of Pennsylvania. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 15 

In the matter of age, as well as in that of 
family and wealth, there was a striking disparity 
between these two. Miss Shippen was scarcely 
twenty years old while Arnold was a widower 
of thirty-five with three sons. But it was the 
story of Honora Sneyd and Richard Edgeworth 
over again. A handsome face, a gallant bear- 
ing and the habit of success with women quite 
outweighed the disadvantage of middle age, and, 
by the spring of 1779, Benedict Arnold, the 
former Connecticut apothecary, was the exult- 
ant husband of Margaret Shippen, daughter 
of one of Philadelphia's proudest families. Natu- 
rally, he now more than ever invited to his house 
the friends of the Shippen family. And quite 
as naturally he was now more than ever criti- 
cized for his friendliness with Tories. General 
Reed wrote indignantly to General Greene 
that Arnold had actually given a party at which 
*' not only common Tory ladies, but the wives 
and daughters of persons proscribed by the 
State, and now with the enemy at New York " 
were present in considerable numbers. Arnold, 
when confronted with this accusation, replied 
that he had never considered it the part of a true 
soldier to persecute in private life the wives and 
daughters of the enemy. But, of course, this 
sophistical retort convinced no one. 

On the woman he loved the effect of the petty 
persecution which now came to be visited upon 



16 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Arnold was (as often happens) to make her 
cling more closely than before to the man her 
heart had chosen. But it is only a coincidence, 
I am sure, that just at the time that they were 
married, Arnold first wrote to Sir Henry Clin- 
ton in disguised handwriting and under the sig- 
nature of " Gustavus," describing himself as 
an American officer of high rank, who, through 
disgust at the French alliance and other pro- 
ceedings of Congress, might perhaps be per- 
suaded to go over to the British, provided he 
could be indemnified for any losses he might 
incur by so doing. The correspondence thus 
begun was kept up at intervals, Clinton's replies 
being penned by Major John Andre, his adju- 
tant-general, over the signature of " John An- 
derson." For nearly eighteen months, indeed, 
the letters continued under fictitious names but 
with the gradual knowledge on the part of both 
principals as to whom the other party was. 

Andre and Mrs. Arnold, too, occasionally 
wrote to each other now, and Arnold did not 
scruple, through this means, to convey certain 
messages to the English side. But Mrs. Arnold 
was, all the while, quite innocent of wrong, and 
the tale that she once confessed complicity in 
the treacherous plot ^ is usually discredited. 

1 A letter from Major Andre to Arnold's wife, offering to secure 
supplies from New York of certain millinery articles for her use is 
generally supposed to cover a meaning understood by Arnold 
alone. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 17 

After his marriage, except when absent to 
attend the court-martial in camp, Arnold was 
pretty constantly in Philadelphia until the 
middle of July, 1780; and it was there that his 
first child by his second marriage, Edward 
Shippen Arnold, was born. The family's re- 
moval to West Point and Arnold's hasty de- 
parture from that place, — following his dis- 
covery of Andre's arrest, — were also events 
of that summer of 1780, a very tragic summer, we 
may believe, for the lovely girl who so short a 
time before had married her handsome general, 
full of high hopes for the future. Some friends 
of the Shippen family assert that the young wife 
would have been glad to return to her father's 
home for good upon the discovery of her hus- 
band's treachery, but if such was her desire she 
was effectually prevented from realizing it by 
this notice, served upon her within a month after 
she had rejoined her own people in Philadel- 
phia, following Arnold's defection: 

"IN COUNCIL 

Philadelphia, Friday, Oct. 27, 1780. 
*' The Council, taking into consideration the 
case of Mrs. Margaret Arnold (the wife of Bene- 
dict Arnold, an attainted traitor with the enemy 
at New York), whose residence in this city has 
become dangerous to the public safety, and 



18 ROMANTIC DAYS 

this Board being desirous as much as possible 
to prevent any correspondence and intercourse 
being carried on with persons of disaffected 
character in this State and the enemy at New 
York, and especially with the said Benedict 
Arnold; therefore 

" Resolved, That the said Margaret Arnold 
depart this State within fourteen days from the 
date hereof, and that she do not return again 
during the continuance of the present war." 

Nor could the Council be induced to with- 
draw this decree although considerable pressure 
was brought to bear upon them to do so. " It 
makes me melancholy every time I think of her 
reunion to that infernal villain," wrote Major 
Edward Burd, who had married Peggy Shippen's 
sister. " The sacrifice was an immense one at 
her being married to him at all. It is much more 
so to be obhged against her will, to go to the 
arms of a man who appears to be so very black." 
Major Burd was probably here expressing his 
own views of Arnold rather than those of his 
sister-in-law, although Washington Irving as- 
serts ^ that it was " strongly against Mrs. Ar- 
nold's will that she rejoined her husband in 
New York." However this may be, she bore 
him four children after she had left Philadel- 
phia, three sons who grew up to be officers in 

^ Life of George Washington. Washington Irving, 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 19 

the British army and a daughter who married 
into the East Indian service. Edward Shippen 
Arnold, who had been born in Philadelphia, 
died in India in 1813, having won high distinc- 
tion in the service of the king. 

The form in which the people's indignation 
at Arnold's act expressed itself in Philadel- 
phia was characteristic of the age. The night 
after the news of his flight was received a hollow 
paper effigy with a light inside and an inscrip- 
tion in large letters on the breast, was carried 
through the streets and then hung upon a gal- 
lows. On the last day of September (1780) a 
much more striking manifestation took place. 
An effigy of Arnold, dressed in regimentals but 
having two faces, was placed on a stage in the 
body of a cart and drawn through the city be- 
hind musicians playing the " Rogue's March," 
to a spot in front of the Coflfee House at 
Front and Market Streets and there burned. 
Towering over the figure in the cart stood the 
devil, with the conventional pitchfork, holding 
a bag of money in his hand. In front was a 
transparency representing Arnold, kneeling to 
the devil, who was about to pull him into the 
flames. 

For Andre, however, who was forced to pay 
with his life for the American's treachery, the 
people as well as the Continental officers appear 
to have felt only pity. A curtain which he had 



20 ROMANTIC DAYS 

painted for the Southwark Theatre at the time 
of the Occupation remained in use until the 
building was burned down (May 8, 1823), quite 
proof enough, it seems to me, that no spirit of 
revenge pursued the memory of the young Eng- 
lishman's stay in Philadelphia. It had been this 
same Southwark Theatre, it is interesting to 
note, which before the Revolution was the scene 
of the first play by an American author ever 
produced in this country. This was on April 
24, 1767, the piece bearing the name of The 
Prince of Parthia and its author being Thomas 
Godfrey, Jr. of Philadelphia: 

In this production of an original American 
play, and, indeed, in almost all of the early the- 
atrical ventures recorded in the stage history 
of Philadelphia, a leading actor was Lewis Hal- 
lam, whose English company had made so great 
a success in New York in 1753 that they were 
urged by the more liberal-minded Philadelphians 
to visit the Quaker City also. The matter was 
not arranged without opposition, and a goodly 
quantity of printer's ink was used in arguments 
pro and con, but eventually this forward step 
was taken and on April 25, 1754, Philadelphia's 
first regular theatrical season was inaugurated. 
The background of the company's efforts at this 
time was a temporary theatre in a warehouse 
situated in King or Water Street between Pine 
and Lombard Streets, but in 1759 they came 




MAJOR ANDRE. 

From a painting hij himself. 





.ffiOm. '^1- ^ 2»^ 



1. SECOND STllEET, NORTH FROM MARKET STREET, ABOUT ISOO, SHOW- 
ING CHRIST CHURCH. 



2. CONGRESS HALL AND 



THE CHESTNUT STREET THEATRE, ABOUT 1800. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 21 

back to occupy a permanent theatre erected for 
them at the corner of Cedar and Vernon Streets. 
The opposition to play-acting was acute in some 
quarters that year, however, and Mr. Hallam 
again went elsewhere with his artists, staying 
away this time for more than five years. Then 
(November 12, 1776) he reopened in the new 
house (much larger than the last) situated at 
the corner of South and Apollo Streets, which so 
long utilized Andre's curtain. Graydon,^ in his 
Memoirs, declares that Hallam " was in Phila- 
delphia as much the soul of the Southwark 
Theatre as ever Garrick was of Drury Lane; 
and if, as Dr. Johnson allows, popularity in 
matters of taste is unquestionable evidence of 
merit, we cannot withhold a considerable por- 
tion of it from Mr. Hallam, notwithstanding 
his faults." (Ranting was one of these faults.) 
The Provincial Congress had come out flatly 
in 1774, however, with the determination to 
*' discourage every species of extravagance and 
dissipation, especially horse-racing, and all kinds 
of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibition of shows, 
plays and other expensive diversions and enter- 
tainments." It naturally had not helped to 
soften this prejudice against the theatre that the 
British officers gave regular dramatic perform- 
ances during the Occupation. Accordingly when, 

^ Memoirs of a Life Passed Chiefly in Pennsylvania, by Alex- 
ander Graydon. 



22 ROMANTIC DAYS 

after the return of the Continental Congress, a 
company of actors (whose names are not known) 
announced some plays, Congress promptly passed 
a resolution prohibiting " any person holding 
an office under the United States " from attend- 
ing. Subsequently the law was made even more 
stringent, and though Lewis Hallam tried hard 
to have the provision repealed, during the ses- 
sion of 1784-85, he was not successful in this 
effort and so could do nothing better than open 
his theatre, March 1, 1785, for " miscellaneous 
entertainments and singing! " Later, growing 
bolder, he added readings of scenes from plays. 
Theatrical history in Philadelphia during the 
next few years recounts one long succession of 
ingenious evasions of the law.^ Finally, the 
community put the matter of repealing the law 
to a petition-vote in the honest endeavor to 
arrive at a true expression of public opinion on 
the matter. The result was that the theatre was 
again made legal and, with the return of Con- 
gress to the city, became distinctly fashionable. 
Brilliant seasons continued at the Southwark 
until 1794, when the popularity of the older house 
was supplanted by that of the Chestnut Street 
Theatre, brave in *' two rows of boxes, Corin- 
thian columns and pale rose-colour panels." A 
member of the Chestnut Street company early 
in the new century was the Elizabeth Arnold, 

1 Cf . Old Boston Days and Ways, p. 427. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 23 

who afterwards married David Poe, then a hand- 
some Southern law-student, and became the 
mother of the famous poet. Another early actor 
at the Chestnut Street was Spencer H. Cone, 
who, after several successful seasons as a Thes- 
pian, became successively an editor, a captain 
of artillery, and a Baptist minister. His early 
passion for the stage cropped out again in his 
granddaughter, Kate Claxton. The story of 
the old South Street or Southwark Theatre was 
not yet closed, however, for in 1807 the first 
French dramatic company that ever appeared 
in Philadelphia opened there; Charles Durang, 
who wrote a History of the Philadelphia Stage^ 
was long the manager here; and it was in this 
place, also, that Joseph Jefferson's mother made 
her first appearance in Philadelphia. 

At the time the Chestnut Street welcomed 
its first audience it was acknowledged to be 
the finest theatre in America. Its seating ca- 
pacity was two thousand, of whom nine hun- 
dred could be accommodated in the boxes, and 
its initial company was very strong both as 
to numbers and talent. In this house it was 
that John Howard Payne, afterwards cele- 
brated as the author of '' Home, Sweet Home " 
made his Philadelphia debut (December 5, 1809) 
in the part of Hamlet. Durang says of him, 
" His youth and beauty of figure were highly 
prepossessing. But sixteen years of age and 



24 ROMANTIC DAYS 

petite in stature, yet he appeared the epitome 
of a Prince Hamlet in soul and manner. His 
face beamed with intelligence and his bearing 
was of the most courtly mould. He was vigor- 
ous without rant; chaste but not dull. He por- 
trayed all the quick thought, restless disposi- 
tion and infirm philosophy of Hamlet with great 
judgment and tact." 

Philadelphia's first great theatrical furor was 
excited by the arrival in 1811 of George Freder- 
ick Cooke, the English tragedian. In those days 
there was no advance seat sale, the method being 
for servants, or those temporarily retained by 
intending playgoers, to stand in line for places, 
and when the doors were opened, rush in to 
seize seats in which they remained until their 
employers came to claim them. As early as the 
Sunday evening preceding Cooke's first per- 
formance the steps of the theatre were covered 
with men prepared to spend the night, some of 
whom actually took off their hats and put on 
nightcaps. By Monday morning the streets 
were impassable and by evening the crowd was 
so great that it was evident that ticket-holders, 
especially ladies, would not be able to make their 
way through it without danger. Accordingly, 
a placard was displayed saying that those who 
held admission tickets could go in through the 
stage door. This so clogged that approach, how- 
ever, that when Cooke arrived, he was obliged 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 25 

to make himself known before even he could 
force a passage through. He did this by calling 
out, " I am like that man going to be hanged who 
told the crowd they would have no fun unless 
they made way for him! " Contemporary criti- 
cisms make one feel that his performance was 
almost worth the trouble it cost to see it; and 
when one reflects that the first-night receipts 
$1,604, came from prices so modest that boxes 
brought only one dollar, one sighs for the " good 
old days." Cooke was the first of the English 
" stars " to visit Philadelphia, but many lights 
of lesser magnitude now followed in his train 
and most of them went to the Chestnut Street. 
It was therefore a heavy blow to the drama in 
Philadelphia when that playhouse burned down 
on April 2, 1820. Plans for rebuilding were 
immediately made, however, so that it was still 
in the Chestnut Street Theatre that the elder 
Booth and Charles Mathews scored their early 
Philadelphia successes. It was here also (July 
5, 1826), that Edwin Forrest made his first ap- 
pearance in his native city as a " star." 

To the annals of the Walnut Street Theatre, 
however, belongs the proud occasion of Forrest's 
debut; and it was there, also, that this very 
great actor made his last appearance on a Phila- 
delphia stage in 1871. On November 27, 1820, 
it was announced that " a young gentleman of 
this city " would play young Norval, and, two 



26 ROMANTIC DAYS 

months later, a performance " for Master For- 
rest's benefit " was advertised. 

Edwin Forrest was then fourteen years of age. 
He was born in a small frame house numbered 
51 on George, afterwards Guilford, Street, and 
his father was a runner for the old United States 
Bank. But, this not being a very remunerative 
occupation, little Edwin had early to shift for 
himself and so made his debut upon the stage of 
life, as many another eminent man before and 
since has done, by being the " devil " of a news- 
paper office. This work he left to enter a cooper- 
shop. His only contact with the tubs seems, 
however, to have been when he turned them up- 
side down and on the thus-improvised platform 
spouted Shakespeare and other poets for the 
edification of his fellow-workmen. Then he 
became a clerk and joined an amateur theat- 
rical company. To appear professionally as 
young Norval was now an easy transition. 

Two days after Edwin Forrest's benefit (in 
January, 1821) another notable event occurred 
at the Walnut Street Theatre — Edmund Kean 
made his first appearance in Philadelphia. The 
character he had chosen was that of Richard III, 
and many of his auditors, remembering Cooke's 
wonderful performance, were inclined to view 
the newcomer coldly. But, as the play pro- 
gressed, Kean's great powers began to reveal 
themselves and the applause which greeted his 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 27 

final scenes was such that he was speedily- 
offered another engagement. His second stay in 
the city terminated disastrously, however, for, 
whether from drink or from the dawning of that 
mental malady which afterwards afflicted him, 
he so conducted himself, while on the stage, that 
there ensued a riot which was long remembered 
in Philadelphia. 

This unpleasant occurrence did not tend to 
make the city any less hospitable, happily, to 
the two Kembles, father and daughter, when 
they came along in 1832, playing " Romeo and 
Juliet " together, and giving finished perform- 
ances of other masterpieces, also. Fanny Kem- 
ble's letters about her experiences in the Quaker 
City are delightful reading. In speaking of the 
" Romeo and Juliet " she says that, in spite of 
the manifest absurdity of her father's acting 
Romeo to his own child's Juliet, " the perfection 
of his art makes it more youthful, graceful, ar- 
dent and lover-like — a better Romeo, in short, 
than the youngest pretender to it nowadays." 
Evidently the Philadelphians thought so, too, 
for they were exceedingly nice to the Kembles, — 
especially Fanny. Even the Quakers, who dis- 
approved of the theatre, recognized the exquis- 
ite quality of this child of the stage, it would 
appear. " And how doth Fanny .^ " questioned 
the master of a Quaker shop of one of her party 
who was doing some shopping. " I was in hopes 



28 ROMANTIC DAYS 

she might have wanted something; we should 
have great pleasure in attending upon her." 
" Was not that nice? " the sweet girl exclaims, 
in her letter home, adding, " I went thither to- 
day and bought myself a lovely sober-coloured 
gown! " 

It should not, however, be thought that 
theatre-going was the sole amusement of Phila- 
delphia at this period. Quite a surprising vari- 
ety of sports and entertainments disclose them- 
selves, indeed, as one reads the memoirs and 
diaries of the time. Before the Revolution such 
barbarous amusements as cock-fighting, bull- 
baiting and bear-baiting were frequently in- 
dulged in, — especially cock-fighting, which 
seems then to have been " the sport for gentle- 
men! " Watson in his Annals quotes from a 
letter of Dr. William Shippen to Dr. Gardiner 
(in 1735) announcing that he has sent his friend 
" a young game-cock to be depended upon," 
and giving as a reason for not sending an old 
cock that " our young cockers have contrived 
to kill and steal all I had." The Philadelphians, 
too, showed their English ancestry by their 
fondness for horseflesh, pacers, rather oddly, 
being deemed the most genteel horses. And 
horses were raced — though the Society of 
Friends, at a very early period, expressed strong 
disapproval of horse-racing and did all that they 
could to discourage it. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 29 

Even the Quakers, however, indulged in some 
forms of water-sports. EHzabeth Drinker's de- 
hghtful Diary contains many references to dips 
in the surf enjoyed by her " dear Henry " during 
their visits to New York, and fishing and skating 
clubs, as natural recreations which could be 
freely indulged in by all, were deservedly popu- 
lar. Graydon boldly dubbed the Philadelphians 
" the best skaters in the world." " Though they 
have never reduced it to rules, like the London- 
ers, nor connected it with their business like 
Dutchmen, I will yet hazard that opinion," he 
declares. In support of which judgment one 
may quote the following anecdote of the painter 
West, as rehearsed in Dunlap's History of Art. 
West had the Philadelphia skill in skating and, 
while in America, had formed the acquaintance 
on the ice with Colonel (afterwards General) 
Howe. But they entirely lost track of each 
other until one day when the painter, having 
fastened on his skates at the Serpentine, was 
astonishing the timid tyros of London by the 
rapidity of his motions and the graceful figure 
which he made. Some one cried, " West! 
West! " It was Colonel Howe. " I am glad 
to see you," said he, " and not the less so that 
you come in good time to vindicate my praises 
of American skating." Whereupon West dis- 
played his great skill to the gentlemen to whom 
Howe introduced him — and made for himself 



30 ROMANTIC DAYS 

many admiring friends who afterwards com- 
missioned him to paint their portraits. 

Card-playing, even for amusement, never 
prevailed to any great extent in Philadelphia, 
and that in an age when gaming was elsewhere 
the pet vice of the fashionable. Witty Rebecca 
Franks, when off on a visit to New York, wrote 
back, " Few ladies here know how to entertain 
company in their own houses unless they intro- 
duce the card table. . . . The Philadelphians 
have more cleverness in the turn of an eye than 
those of New York have in their whole compo- 
sition. With what ease have I seen a Chew, a 
Penn, an Oswald, an Allen and a thousand others, 
entertain a large circle of both sexes, the con- 
versation, without the aid of cards, never flag- 
ging nor seeming in the least strained or stupid." 
Billiards, too, were anathema in Philadelphia 
until a resourceful writer discovered in this 
amusement an analogy to marbles, and so re- 
moved the curse. " Both games," he lucidly 
pointed out, " are played with balls; the only 
difference is that the one is made of common 
stone, the other of ivory, and that the one is 
driven forward by the hand and the other with 
a stick. Now, I cannot see why anything sinful 
can be attributed to an elephant's tooth more 
than to a stone, or how the crime is greater by 
propelling a ball with a stick instead of the hand, 
or by playing it on a table and in a room instead 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 31 

of at a corner of the street and on the ground." 
Thenceforward billiards was respectable. 

Of out-door places of public resort there were 
several in old Philadelphia. One, fitted up on 
the plan of the public gardens in London and 
situated at the Lower Ferry of the Schuylkill, 
was opened shortly after the Revolution and 
known as Gray's Gardens. Soon there came a 
rival called Harrowgate, where a mineral spring 
had been discovered, in whose properties, how- 
ever, the proprietor of the place seems not to 
have put all his trust, inasmuch as he adver- 
tised, besides his mineral water, " the best of 
liquors of all and every kind." The Wigwam 
baths, on the banks of the Schuylkill, at the foot 
of Race Street, sounds, however, the most allur- 
ing place of them all. For in this establishment, 
fitted up in 1791 by John Coyle, was to be found 
a bowling green, two shower baths, and one 
plunging bath, besides good things to eat. 
Priest, in his Travels Through the United States, 
1793-97, says, " One evening at six o'clock, a 
party of pleasure went to a tea-garden and tav- 
ern romantically situated on the banks of the 
Schuylkill, famous for serving up coffee in style. 
On the table there were coffee, cheese, sweet- 
cakes, hung beef, sugar, pickled salmon, butter, 
crackers, ham, cream, and bread. The ladies 
all declared it was a most charming relish." 

Fireworks, known as " grand pyrotechnic dis- 



32 ROMANTIC DAYS 

plays," were always popular in Philadelphia, 
and for museums full of curiosities the people 
also had a wholesome fondness. Keeping such 
museums was a very respectable occupation, too, 
because, for a long time, only gentlemen en- 
gaged in it. Charles Wilson Peale, the painter, 
was one of these. Peale's first museum was in 
his residence, corner of Third and Lombard 
Streets, but when his collections so increased 
as to make these quarters too small the Philo- 
sophical Society offered him the use of its build- 
ing in Fifth Street, below Chestnut. To this 
place it was that all Philadelphia for years took 
its visiting country cousins to see the mammoth, 
whose rehabilitation, by Peale and his clever 
sons, had been celebrated by the serving of a 
collation, inside the huge skeleton, to twelve gentle- 
men whom Peale desired thus to honor! An- 
other feature of this fascinating resort was a 
collection of stuffed monkeys, dressed as human 
beings and engaged in some of the occupations 
familiar to man. Peale's Museum was ulti- 
mately absorbed by the Philadelphia Museum 
Company situated at the corner of Ninth and 
Sansom Streets, and here, besides the Peale por- 
traits, the mammoth and the monkeys, there was 
long shown a notable collection of life-like wax 
figures (owned by Nathan Dunn, who had been 
a merchant in China) and representing properly- 
costumed Chinese men and women, looking and 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 33 

bearing themselves exactly as the Chinese people 
then did in their streets and native bazaars. 
" The store-keeper was behind his counter just 
as he was to be seen in the streets of Canton, with 
rolls of real silk upon the shelves of his shop. 
A tawny-skinned customer was represented 
making his selection of goods; a clerk was busy 
at his desk making entries in his books with the 
aid of a camel's hair pencil and a stick of India 
ink; a beggar was soliciting alms; the walls 
were adorned with wise maxims from Confu- 
cius. In the narrow apartment, which repre- 
sented the open street, were Chinese coolies 
trotting along with some luxurious individual 
suspended in a sedan chair from bamboo poles; 
the Chinese barber was seen plying his trade 
upon the 'nob' of a customer in the open air; 
the itinerant tinker was blowing his fire to com- 
mence operations upon a cracked dinner-pot; 
an ancient cobbler was busy upon a damaged 
shoe; and even the boatman, who spends his 
entire life upon a frail skiff upon the Canton 
River, was represented with his wife and his 
little ones, on board a real boat taken from the 
river by Mr. Dunn, with all its real fixtures and 
appurtenances complete even to the gourd which 
was tied to the young amphibious Celestials to 
keep them afloat in case of a sudden dip in the 
river." ^ As the day of the moving picture and 

1 History of Chestnut Street, by Casper Souder, Jr. 



84 ROMANTIC DAYS 

of cheap Cook tours around the world had then 
not come, it will be understood that this exhibi- 
tion was a much-prized source of entertainment 
and instruction in Philadelphia. 

There were permanent circuses, too, when 
the Republic was still very young. But they 
were looked upon as rather doubtful amusements, 
and when one of them, Ricketts' circus, burned 
up, in the course of a representation of Don 
Juan, which realistically depicted that fasci- 
nating philanderer being consumed by the fires 
of hell, the catastrophe was declared by some 
to be a judgment of Providence on a grossly 
impious act. Sensible Elizabeth Drinker ap- 
pears not to have shared in this narrow view, 
however, for she merely quotes the account of 
the fire as published in Claypole's paper ^ of 
December 18, 1799, and makes no comment 
whatever on it. 

Against masked dancing parties Philadelphia 
sternly set its face. Dancing masters of many 
kinds and grades had for some time practised 
their profession quite undisturbed, but when, 
in 1804, Monsieur Epervil made an attempt to 
introduce masquerade balls, an Act of Assembly 
promptly declared this form of entertainment 
to be a common nuisance. That the evil to be 
suppressed was supposed to be a very serious 

1 Philadelphia published no less than eight daily papers at this 
period! 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 35 

one is shown by the fact that Section I of the 
prohibiting act provided that " every house- 
keeper within the Commonwealth who shall 
knowingly permit and suffer a masquerade or 
masked ball to be given in his or her house, any 
person who shall set on foot, promote or en- 
courage any masquerade or masked ball, and 
every person who shall knowingly attend or be 
present at any masquerade or masked ball in 
mask or otherwise, being thereof legally con- 
victed, . . . shall for each and every offence be 
sentenced to an imprisonment not exceeding 
three months, and to pay a fine not exceeding 
one thousand or less than fifty dollars, and to 
give security in such sum as the court may direct 
to keep the peace and be of good behavior for 
one year." 

Dancing itself was not frowned down, how- 
ever. Even before the middle of the eighteenth 
century there were several different dancing sets 
among the " world's people " of the town. A 
dancing assembly was formed, probably for the 
first time, in 1740, though what is known as the 
First Dancing Assembly was not organized until 
eight years later. The membership in this latter 
group comprised representatives from nearly 
all the prominent Philadelphia families who 
were not Quakers, and its formation marks the 
beginning of an important epoch in the social 
and family history of the city. The subscrip- 



36 ROMANTIC DAYS 

tion price was forty shillings, but it was family 
and not wealth which constituted the qualifi- 
cation for membership; when the daughter of 
Michael Hillegas, the first treasurer of the 
United States, married a prosperous jeweler 
and goldsmith of Market Street she was com- 
pelled to forego her former place, the families 
of mechanics, however wealthy, being rigorously 
excluded. Somewhat later another assembly, 
not so exclusive, was formed, and it is said that 
when General Washington was invited to both 
balls on the same night he put in an appearance 
at both and stayed precisely as long at one place 
as the other. 

The Marquis de Chastellux gives a racy ac- 
count of one of these subscription balls which he 
attended while visiting Philadelphia after the 
Revolution. " A manager or master of cere- 
monies presides at these methodical amusements; 
he presents to the gentlemen and ladies, dan- 
cers, billets folded up containing each a number; 
thus fate decides the male or female partner 
for the whole evening. All the dances are pre- 
viously arranged and the dancers are called in 
their turns. These dances, like the toasts we 
drink at table, have some relation to politics; 
one is called the Success of the Campaign, an- 
other the Defeat of Burgoyne, and a third Clin- 
ton's Retreat. The managers are generally 
chosen from among the most distinguished oflfi- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 37 

cers of the army. . . . Colonel Mitchell was 
formerly the manager but when I saw him he had 
descended from the magistracy and danced like 
a private citizen. He is said to have exercised 
his office with great severity and it is told of 
him that a young lady who was figuring in a 
country dance, having forgotten her turn by 
conversing with a friend, was thus addressed 
by him, ' Give over, Miss, mind what you are 
about. Do you think you come here for your 
pleasure? ' " 

Of the ladies to be met with at these and sim- 
ilar social functions de Chastellux speaks rather 
slightingly but the Duke de Rochefoucauld- 
Liancourt, who was in Philadelphia about five 
months towards the close of the year 1794, de- 
clares with incomparable gallantry, " In the 
numerous assemblies of Philadelphia it is im- 
possible to meet with what is called a plain 
woman." Rochefoucauld, to be sure, saw the 
city's very choicest daughters, for he brought 
many letters of introduction and was very cor- 
dially received in the best homes. Moreover, 
the time of which he wrote was a dozen years 
later than that of de Chastellux's visit; dozens 
of promising girls might have grown up to be 
superb women in that interval. Yet valuable 
as are the descriptions of Philadelphia furnished 
us by these various clever Frenchmen who came 
to America at this period and went back to 



38 ROMANTIC DAYS 

write books about what they saw, it is only after 
one has read them all and made one's own de- 
ductions from the sum-total of their impressions 
that one arrives at what was probably the real 
truth. 

Brissot de Warville has left us a delightful 
description of Philadelphia about 1788, which 
gives perhaps as true a contemporary picture as 
can be found of the way the city looked then: 
*' At ten o'clock in the evening," he says, " all 

/ is tranquil in the streets; the profound silence 
which reigns there is only interrupted by the 
voice of the watchmen, who are in small numbers 
and who form the only patrole. The streets are 
lighted by lamps, placed like those of London. 

/ " On the side of the streets are footways of 
brick, and gutters constructed of brick or wood. 
Strong posts are placed to prevent carriages 
from passing on the footways. All the streets 
are furnished with public pumps in great num- 
bers. At the door of each house are placed two 
benches where the family sit at evening to take 
the fresh air and amuse themselves from look- 
ing at the passengers. It is certainly a bad cus- 
tom as the evening air is unheal thful, and the 
exercise is not sufficient to correct this evil, for 
they never walk here: they supply the want of 
walking by riding out into the country. They 
have few coaches at Philadelphia. You see 
many handsome waggons which are used to 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 39 

carry the family into the country; they are a 
kind of long carriage, light and open, and many 
contain twelve persons. They have many chairs 
and sulkeys open on all sides; the former may 
carry two persons, the latter only one. 

" Philadelphia is built on a regular plan; 
long and large streets cross each other at right 
angles: this regularity is at first embarrassing 
to a stranger; he has much difficulty in finding 
himself, especially if the streets are not in- 
scribed, and the doors not numbered. It is 
strange that the Quakers, who are so fond of 
order, have not adopted these two conveniences; 
that they have not borrowed them from the 
English, of whom they have borrowed so many 
things. 

" Already they have carpets in Philadelphia, 
elegant carpets; it is a favorite taste with the 
x\mericans; they receive it from the interested 
avarice of their old masters, the English. A 
carpet in summer is an absurdity; yet they 
spread them in this season, and from vanity: 
this vanity excuses itself by saying that the car- 
pet is an ornament; that is to say, they sacrifice 
reason and utility to show. 

'*The Quakers have likewise carpets; but 
the rigorous ones blame this practice. They 
mentioned to me an instance of a Quaker from 
Carolina, who, going to dine with one of the 
most opulent at Philadelphia, was offended at 



40 ROMANTIC DAYS 

finding the passage from the door to the stair- 
case covered with a carpet, and would not enter 
the house; he said that he never dined in a house 
where there was luxury; and that it was better 
to clothe the poor than to clothe the earth. 

" Notwithstanding the fatal effects that might 
be expected here from luxury, we may say with 
truth that there is no town where morals are 
more respected. Adultery is not known here: 
there is no instance of a wife of any sect who has 
failed in her duties. This I am told is owing 
to what may be called the civil state of women. 
They marry without dower; they bring to their 
husbands only the furniture of their houses, 
and they wait the death of their parents, before 
they come to the possession of their property." 
An explanation, if not a very noble one, of what 
seemed to Brissot the extraordinary chastity 
of the Philadelphia women! 

'' The State House where the Legislature as- 
sembles, is a handsome building," our chroni- 
cler then declares — thus bringing us to the 
reconstruction period in Philadelphia. The 
manner in which the ofl&cial families of the city 
entertained themselves at this stage of our 
country's development is interesting. Wash- 
ington tried as hard and as naively as anyone to 
divert himself after the strain of the war. The 
theatre, the circus, balloon ascensions, even cock- 
fights were visited by him, as we see from the 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 41 

scrupulous care with which he recorded his va- 
rious expenditures. Once he gave nine shilHngs 
to a man *' who brought an elk to exhibit," and 
we find that he went with impartial avidity to 
see an automaton, a dancing bear, a puppet 
show, wax-works, and a tiny menagerie made 
up only of a tiger and a lioness. For lotteries, 
then in good repute, he had a distinct passion, 
though he was never lucky about drawing 
things. " By profit and loss, in two chances 
in raffling for encyclopaedia Britannica which I 
did not win £1/4," is a characteristic entry 
in his account book. 

That the man at the head of the country's 
activities must greatly have needed diversion, 
while the Constitution was being framed, we 
may well believe. The delegates chosen for 
this Herculean task assembled in Philadelphia, 
in May, 1787, and went immediately to work 
in the old State House, whose walls had previ- 
ously echoed the Declaration of Independence. 
By September they were able to submit the 
document, on which they had labored so hard 
for four months, to the various States for ratifi- 
cation, and on April 30th, 1789, Washington 
was duly inaugurated. Thus the United States 
possessed at last a settled government and a 
visible head. Soon, now, Philadelphia was to be 
the capital for ten years, and that in spite of the 
murmurs of those officials who found the native 



42 ROMANTIC DAYS 

complacency very irritating and the cost of 
living appallingly high. " The city is large and 
elegant," writes Oliver Wolcott to his wife, 
" but it did not strike me with the astonishment 
which the citizens predicted." 

Abigail Adams, too, was only mildly pleased 
with the place which was now for some years 
to be her home. " The Schuylkill," she writes 
her daughter, Nov. 21, 1790, " is no more like 
the Hudson than I to Hercules. . . . When we 
arrived we found the first load of our furniture 
being taken into a house all green-painted, and 
the workmen there with their brushes in hand. 
. . . No wood nor fodder had been provided 
beforehand, so we could only turn about, and 
go to the City Tavern for the night. 

"The next morning was pleasant, and I ven- 
tured to come up and take possession. But 
what confusion! Boxes, barrels, chairs, tables, 
trunks, etc., everything to be arranged, and few 
hands to accomplish it. . . . The first object 
was to get fires; the next to get up beds; 
but the cold, damp rooms, the new paint, etc., 
proved almost too much for me. On Friday 
we arrived here, and late on Saturday evening 
we got our furniture in. On Sunday Thomas 
was laid up with the rheumatism; on Monday I 
was obliged to give Louis an emetic; on Tuesday 
Mrs. Briesler was taken with her old pain in her 
stomach; and to complete the whole, on Thurs- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 43 

day Polly was seized with a violent pluritic fever. 
She has been twice bled, a blister upon her side, 
and has not been out of bed since, only as she's 
taken up to have her bed made. And every day, 
the stormy ones excepted, from eleven until 
three, the house is filled with ladies and gentle- 
men. All this is no more nor worse than I ex- 
pected, I bear it without repining, and feel thank- 
ful that I have weathered it without a relapse, 
though some days I have not been able to sit 
up. 

" Mrs. Bingham has been twice to see me. 
I think she is more amiable and beautiful than 
ever. . . . I've not yet begun to return visits 
as the ladies expect to find me at home. . . . 
Mrs. Lear was in to see me yesterday and as- 
sures me that I am much better off than Mrs. 
Washington will be when she arrives, for that 
their house is not likely to be completed this 
year. And when all is done it will not be Broad- 
way." 

The Mrs. Bingham to whom Abigail Adams 
here makes admiring allusion, was for many 
years the leading spirit of Philadelphia society. 
The daughter of Thomas Willing and a relative of 
the famous family of Shippens, to whom several 
references have already been made, she was mar- 
ried Oct. 26th, 1780 (being then only sixteen!), 
to William Bingham, United States Senator from 
Pennsylvania. John Jay, whose own wife was 



44 ROMANTIC DAYS 

so lovely that she was once mistaken at the 
theatre in Paris for the exquisite Marie An- 
toinette, wrote from Spain to felicitate Mr. 
Bingham on his nuptials " with one of the most 
lovely of her sex." A few years after the mar- 
riage Mr. and Mrs. Bingham went abroad and 
spent some time in France, where she was pre- 
sented at the court of Louis XVI and attracted 
much attention among the nobles and aristoc- 
racy. Her dress at a certain dinner given by the 
Lafayettes is described as of " black velvet with 
pink satin sleeves and stomacher, a pink satin 
petticoat, and over it a skirt of white crepe 
spotted all over with gray fur; the sides of the 
gown open in front, and the bottom of the coat 
trimmed with paste. It was superb." 

After spending some time at The Hague Mrs. 
Bingham accompanied her husband to England, 
where " her elegance and beauty attracted more 
attention than was perhaps willingly expressed 
in the old Court of George the Third." Great 
as was the reputation of American women for 
beauty, Mrs. Adams wrote that she had never 
seen a lady in England who could bear com- 
parison with Mrs. Bingham. And from London 
Miss Adams later wrote of this fascinating 
woman, " She is coming quite into fashion here 
and is very much admired. The hairdresser 
who dresses us on Court-days inquired of 
mamma whether she knew the lady so much 




Copyrighted, 189S, by the Pennsylvania V' i.li'im of Fine Arts. 

MHS. MAJOR WILLIAM JACKSOX (BORX ELIZABETH WILLING.) 

From the -portrait by Gilbert Stuart now in the possession of the Pennsylvania Academy 

of Fine Arts. 
Page 47. 




I-'^ P' 



^liiiil: 



ifi J' fv-. 1 





1. THIRD STREET FROM SPRUCE STREET, ABOUT ISOO. 
2. HIGH STREET FROM NINTH STREET, ABOUT 1800. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 45 

talked of here from America — Mrs. Bingham. 
He has heard of her . . . and at last speaking 
of Miss Hamilton he said with a twirl of his 
comb, ' Well, it does not signify, but the Ameri- 
can ladies do beat the English all to nothing.' " 
From which authoritative pronouncement, one 
must conclude that Mrs. Bingham was, indeed, 
a woman of rare beauty. She possessed im- 
mense wealth also, which enabled her to live 
in very great luxury, and inasmuch as her hus- 
band upon his return to Philadelphia built in 
Third Street above Spruce a mansion-house 
modeled on the Duke of Manchester's residence, 
she was able to entertain in a truly splendid 
fashion. 

One of the foreign customs introduced into 
Philadelphia society by Mrs. Bingham was that 
of the servants' announcing the names of guests 
on their arrival at a party, at different stages of 
the way from the hall to the drawing-room. 
One evening a visitor, to whom this was an in- 
novation, hearing his name called out repeatedly 
while he was removing his outer garments, cried 
out, " Coming! " " Coming! " and in a louder 
tone as he heard his name at the drawing-room 
door, " Coming! As soon as I can get my great- 
coat off! " 

The first masquerade ball in Philadelphia is 
said to have been given at Mrs. Bingham's, but 
this lady did not greatly patronize the theatre, 



46 ROMANTIC DAYS 

and so was refused on any terms the private 
box which she begged Manager Wignell to grant 
her. She offered to furnish and decorate the 
box at her own expense, but she insisted on keep- 
ing the key and allowing no one to enter with- 
out her permission; this the manager would not 
permit for fear of offending the fierce spirit of 
liberty and equality in the masses. When the 
Viscount de Noailles, brother-in-law of La- 
fayette, visited America in the summer of 1795, 
he was a guest of the Binghams, and when Louis 
Philippe was here he is said to have sought a 
daughter of the family in marriage. But the 
senator declined the alliance. " Should you 
ever," he said, " be restored to your hereditary 
position you will be too great a match for my 
daughter; if not, she is too great a match for 
you.'; 

Quite different from the elegance of the enter- 
tainments given at the Bingham mansion, was 
the simplicity of life in Washington's home. 
Though Robert Morris's house, the best in the 
city, was taken for the President's residence, the 
mode of life there was notably simple. " On 
Friday last," wrote Abigail Adams, Dec. 26th, 
1790, " I went with Charles to the drawing- 
room, being the first of my appearance in public. 
The room became full before I left it, and the 
circle very brilliant. How could it be otherwise, 
when the dazzling Mrs. Bingham and her 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 47 

beautiful sisters ^ were there; the Misses Allen, 
and the Misses Chew; in short, a constellation 
of beauties? " A more categorical description 
of this interesting affair may be found in a letter 
sent by Miss Sally McKean back to a friend in 
New York: " You never could have had such 
a drawing-room; it was brilliant beyond any- 
thing you could imagine; and though there was 
a great deal of extravagance there was so much 
of Philadelphia taste in everything, that it must 
have been confessed the most delightful occasion 
of the kind ever known in this country." 

By this time Mrs. Adams appears to have 
ceased to mourn for the joys of " Broadway." 
** If I were to accept one-half the invitations 
I receive," she wrote, Jan. 8, 1791, " I should 
spend a very dissipated winter. Even Saturday 
evening is not excepted, and I refused an invi- 
tation of that kind for this evening. I have 
been to one assembly. The dancing was very 
good; the company the best; the President and 
Madame, the Vice-President and Madame, Min- 
isters of State and their Madames, etc. ; but the 
room despicable. 

" The managers [of the theatre] have been 
very polite to me and my family. I have been 
to one play, and here again we have been treated 

^ One of these " sisters " was Mrs. Major William Jackson (bom 
Elizabeth Willing), whose portrait, by Stuart, is now owned by the 
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. 



48 ROMANTIC DAYS 

with much politeness. The actors came and 
informed us that a box was prepared for us. 
The Vice-President thanked them for their 
civihty, and told them he would attend when- 
ever the President did. And last Wednesday 
we were all there. The house is equal to most 
of the theatres we meet with out of France. It 
is very neat and prettily fitted up; the actors 
did their best; ' The School for Scandal ' was 
the play. I missed the divine Farren, but upon 
the whole it was very well performed. On 
Tuesday next I go to a dance at Misses Chews, 
and on Friday sup at Mr. Clymer's; so you see 
I am likely to be amused." So well amused, 
indeed, was Mrs. Adams that by the time she 
came to leave Philadelphia she wrote thus cor- 
dially of the place: " From its inhabitants I 
have received every mark of politeness and 
civility. The ladies are well educated, well 
bred and well dressed. There is much more so- 
ciety than in New York." 

From the pen of Wansey, an English traveler 
who took breakfast with President Washington 
in June, 1794, we get a vivid description of the 
domestic manners which then obtained in the 
First Household of the Land. Mrs. Washing- 
ton, we are told, made tea and coffee, and there 
was sliced tongue, dry toast, and bread and but- 
ter. Miss Eleanor Custis, a girl of sixteen, sat 
nearest the hostess, and next came her grandson 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 49 

George. One servant, who wore no livery, 
waited on the table; and a silver urn for hot 
water was the only expensive piece of table 
furniture. The President was at that time in 
his sixty-third year but looked rather younger 
than Mrs. Washington. She was short, robust 
in figure and very plainly dressed; her gray hair 
turned up under a plain cap. 

Wansey visited Mrs. Bingham also, and made 
the following note in his diary: " June 8, 1794. 
I dined this day with Mrs. Bingham to whom I 
had letters of introduction. I found a magnifi- 
cent house and gardens in the best English style, 
with elegant and even superb furniture. The 
chairs of the drawing-room were from Seddons, 
in London, of the newest taste, — the backs 
in the form of a lyre with festoons of crimson 
and yellow silk; the curtains of the room, a 
festoon of the same; the carpet one of Moore's 
most expensive patterns. The room was papered 
in the French taste, after the style of the Vati- 
can at Rome. In the garden was a profusion of 
lemon, orange, and citron trees, and many aloes 
and other exotics." From the bill of sale pub- 
lished in the United States Gazette of Nov. 16th, 
1805, four years after Mrs. Bingham's death, 
one gathers that every elegance then known in 
the way of household furniture had its place 
in this sumptuous establishment; and as one 
reads over the list of arm-chairs, fire-screens, 



50 ROMANTIC DAYS 

looking-glasses, mahogany sideboards, busts, and 
pictures which once formed the setting for this 
beautiful woman's social success, it becomes 
easy to picture her apartment on a festal day 
thronged with its galaxy of beauties and its 
brilliant public men wearing the elegant costume 
of the times. Washington at some such recep- 
tion was thus attired, according to Asbury 
Dickens: " He was dressed in a full suit of the 
richest black velvet; his lower limbs in short 
clothes, with diamond laiee-buckles and black 
silk stockings. His shoes, which were brightly 
japanned, were surmounted with large square 
silver buckles. His hair, carefully displayed in 
the manner of the day, was richly powdered 
and gathered behind into a black silk bag, on 
which was a bow of black ribbon. In his hand 
he held a plain cocked hat, decorated with the 
American cockade. He wore by his side a light 
slender dress-sword in a green shagreen scab- 
bard with a richly ornamented hilt." 

Thus at any rate Washington was probably 
arrayed at his own receptions, very formal af- 
fairs held every second Tuesday between three 
and four in the afternoon, the " scene being 
set " by the simple expedient of carrying his 
dining-room chairs out and so turning that room 
into a reception-hall. But if Washington's house 
was modest his equipage was distinctly impo- 
sing. He drove abroad in a big cream-colored 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 51 

coach globular in shape and ornamented in the 
French style with cupids in scant but flowing- 
drapery, and wreaths of flowers crowning all. 
A tall German coachman, "possessing an aqui- 
line nose," handled the reins, and the horses 
were two beautiful long-tailed Virginia bays. 
The President walked as well as rode about 
the town, however, and was in the habit of 
strolling every day at noon to set his watch by 
Clark's standard at Front and High Streets, 
gravely saluting the porters who uncovered as 
he passed. Great as was his personal dignity 
he had no false pride, as some writers would 
seem to have us feel. Nor did he possess, either, 
that exaggerated sense of the deference due to 
him which has tended to make him so wooden 
a figure to succeeding generations. 

On the President's birthday handsome par- 
ties were always given, and Mr. Isaac Weld, 
in his Travels, speaks of one birthday, when 
Washington received from eleven o'clock in 
the morning until three in the afternoon in the 
large parlor of the first floor of his house in 
Market Street between Fifth and Sixth, while 
Mrs. Washington received in her drawing-room 
upstairs. These birthday parties, which usu- 
ally ended in a ball, were as eagerly anticipated 
by the belles of that day as dancing parties are 
now. Miss Sarah Cox, looking happily forward 
to the birth-night ball to be given President 



52 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Washington in Philadelphia on his anniversary 
of 1797, says: " The common topic of conver- 
sation here is the Birth night, which is next 
Wednesday. ... I talk of taking two pair of 
shoes with me for I danced one pair nearly out 
at the last Assembly and I am sure if I could 
do that when it had nothing to do with the 
President, what shall I do when I have his 
presence to inspire me." 

Compared with such balls as Mrs. Bingham 
gave, however, these birthday functions were 
simplicity itself. Her hospitality was as lavish 
as it was constant and it was largely due to 
her magnificent entertainments that Philadel- 
phia, at this period, attained its very high rank 
as a social center. A number of brilliant dip- 
lomatic marriages were made during Washing- 
ton's second administration, one of the most 
interesting being that of the Spanish Minister 
to the United States, the Senor Martinez de 
Yrujo, afterwards created Marquis de Casa 
Yrujo, to lovely Sally McKean, one of whose 
sprightly letters was quoted above. A contem- 
porary writer tells us that at President John 
Adams's inauguration this Spaniard wore " his 
hair powdered like a snowball ; with dark striped 
silk coat lined with satin, black silk breeches, 
white silk stockings, shoes, and buckles. He had 
by his side an elegant-hilted small-sword and his 
chapeau, tipped with white feathers, under his 




■I ^ 

S 'a 



S o 









IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 53 

arm." One does not wonder that Miss Sally 
succumbed to the charms of this resplendent 
person whom she had met at a dinner soon after 
his arrival in Philadelphia. 

As it happens we have a pen-picture of this 
meeting! For " among the first to arrive," 
a contemporary writer tells us, " was Chief 
Justice McKean, accompanied by his lovely 
daughter, Miss Sally. She wore a blue satin 
dress trimmed with white crape and flowers, 
and petticoat of white crape richly embroid- 
ered, and across the front a festoon of rose 
colour caught up with flowers. The next to 
arrive was Senor Don Carlos Martinez de Yrujo, 
a stranger to almost all the guests.^ He spoke 
with ease but with a foreign accent, and was 
soon lost in amazement at the beauty and grace 
of Miss McKean. . . . The acquaintance thus 
commenced, resulted in the marriage of Miss 
McKean to Senor Martinez de Yrujo at Phila- 
delphia, April 10, 1798." 

The Honorable Samuel Breck, to whose 
Reminiscences we are indebted for many racy 
accounts of people and happenings in the Phil- 
adelphia of this period, was a warm friend of 
the Binghams, and by reason of his foreign edu- 
cation was able to be of considerable social 
service to this gifted hostess when the Due de 

1 The winter preceding his marriage De Yrujo resided at 315 
High Street. 



54 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, the ecclesiastical dip- 
lomat Talleyrand and other Frenchmen of simi- 
lar distinction were there entertained. Not that 
Mrs. Bingham herself was in any way unequal 
to the situation! From a letter sent her by 
Thomas Jefferson, then still abroad, we see that 
salon life in France was perfectly familiar to her. 
Jefferson, in this letter, appears to be rallying 
her, indeed, on her previously expressed fond- 
ness for it. " Tell me truly and honestly," he 
urges, " do you not find the tranquil pleasures 
of America preferable to the empty bustle of 
Paris? For to what does that bustle tend.^^ At 
eleven o'clock it is day, chez madame. The cur- 
tains are drawn. Propped on bolsters and pil- 
lows and her head scratched into a little order, 
the bulletins of the sick are read and the billets 
of the well. She writes to some of her acquaint- 
ances and receives the visits of others. 

" If the morning is not very thronged, she 
is able to get out and hobble around the cage 
of the Palais Royal; but she must hobble 
quickly, for the coiffeur's turn is come; and a 
tremendous turn it is! Happy, if he does not 
make her arrive when dinner is half over! The 
torpitude of digestion a little passed, she flutters 
half an hour through the streets, by way of 
paying visits, and then to the spectacles. These 
finished, another half hour is devoted to dodging 
in and out of the doors of her very sincere friends. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 55 

and away to supper. After supper, cards; and 
after cards, bed; to rise at noon the next day 
and to tread, like a mill-horse, the same trodden 
circle over again. ... If death or bankruptcy 
happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter 
for the buzz of the evening and is completely 
forgotten by the next morning. 

" In America, on the other hand, the society 
of your husband, the fond cares of the children, 
the arrangements of the house, the improve- 
ments of the grounds, fill every moment with a 
healthy and a useful activity. . . . The inter- 
vals of leisure are filled with the society of real 
friends, whose affections are not thinned to a 
cobweb by being spread over a thousand ob- 
jects. This is the picture in the light it is pre- 
sented to my mind." 

How accurately he had sketched Mrs. Bing- 
ham's manner of life in America Jefferson soon 
had opportunity to learn, for, upon his return to 
his native land, he was often at her home. His 
own home, at this period, was in the country ^ 
near Gray's Ferry and he often speaks of wander- 
ing on the banks of the Schuylkill, with his 
younger daughter, Maria, who was in the habit 
of spending her Sundays out of doors with him. 

' The limits of Philadelphia at the time of Washington's admin- 
istration were very narrow in comparison with those of to-day. 
Front, Second, Third and Fourth Streets, on the Delaware side, 
were its principal avenues, and it did not from any point extend 
much west of Sixth Street. 



56 ROMANTIC DAYS 

His life was not then marked by the extreme 
simphcity which afterwards came to be asso- 
ciated with his name; he kept five horses and had 
four or five men-servants in his estabhshment 
in addition to his French steward, Petit, and his 
daughter's maid. 

The country -place far excellence of the early 
Republican Philadelphia was, however, that of 
Robert Morris. It was called "The Hills," 
and Mrs. Drinker, in her Diary, writes of her 
daughter and her young friends having gone to 
see its greenhouse as one of the sights of the 
town. Samuel Breck, in his Recollections, says, 
" There was a luxury in the kitchen, table, par- 
lour and street equipage of Mr. and Mrs. Morris 
that was to be found nowhere else in America. 
Bingham's was more gaudy but less comfortable. 
It was the pure and unalloyed which the Morrises 
sought to place before their friends, without the 
abatements that so frequently accompany the 
displays of fashionable life. No badly-cooked 
or cold dinners at their table; no pinched fires 
upon their hearths; no paucity of waiters; no 
awkward loons in their drawing-rooms. . . . 
We have no such establishments now. God in 
his mercy gives us plenty of provisions but it 
would seem as if the devil possessed the cooks." 
Morris's city residence, after he had given up 
the Richard Penn house to Washington, was 
at the corner of Sixth and Market Streets. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 57 

Washington was often here to drink tea, for of 
Mrs. Morris as of Mrs. Bingham he was very 
fond. These two ladies shared with Mrs. 
Walter Stewart the distinction of being sent 
portraits of the first President at the time of 
his retirement from public life. 

Mrs. Stewart was a charming Irish beauty, 
the daughter of Blair McClenachen, a retired 
merchant of great wealth, who had purchased 
the Chews' celebrated place at Germantown. 
So much did Washington admire Mrs. Stewart 
that he made one of his rare jokes for her bene- 
fit. When she and her husband, who had been 
a colonel in the Continental Army, were sailing 
for Europe in 1785 Washington wrote his former 
companion-in-arms: " Mrs. Washington joins 
me in wishing you a good and prosperous voy- 
age and in compliments to Mrs. Stewart. Tell 
her if she don't think of me often, I shall not 
easily forgive her and will scold her and beat 
her — soundly too — at piquet the next time 
I see her." 

Tea-drinking was a regular dissipation of 
those days, and Washington seems heartily to 
have enjoyed this diversion at the homes of 
his friends. Other public men who came over 
here fell easily into this social habit also; from 
the Prince de Broglie's description of his first 
tea-drinking here in August, 1782 (Mrs. Morris 
being his hostess), we learn that it was the 



58> ROMANTIC DAYS 

custom of the time to put the spoon across the 
cup when the desire was " to bring this warm 
water question to an end." Unhappily, how- 
ever, the prince was not informed of this bit of 
etiquette until he had already drunk twelve 
cups of tea! Perhaps it was because people 
consumed such immense quantities of tea, among 
other things, that the cost of living was so high 
in the Philadelphia of this period. Abigail 
Adams, in one of her letters in 1790, declared: 
" Every article has become almost double in 
price." And in the documents and diaries of 
the time there is constant complaint about the 
exceedingly high cost of everything. Prices which 
had become inflated during the Revolution, 
owing to the depreciation of the currency, were 
appallingly slow in getting down again to their 
normal level. 

The letters from Mrs. Bache to her father. 
Dr. Franklin, when he was our Minister to 
France, give us a vivid insight into this: " If 
I was to mention the prices of the common neces- 
saries of life, it would astonish you," she writes. 
" I should tell you that I had seven table-cloths 
of my own spinning, chiefly wove before we left 
Chester County; it was what we were spinning 
when you went. I find them very useful, and 
they look very well, but they now ask four times 
as much for weaving as they used to ask for the 
linen. . , . I am going to write cousin Jonathan 



IN THE EARLY REPUELIC 59 

Williams to purchase me linen for common 
sheets . . . they really ask me six dollars for 
a pair of gloves, and I have been obliged to pay 
fifteen pounds fifteen shillings for a common 
calamanco petticoat without quilting that I 
once could have got for fifteen shillings. I buy 
nothing but what I really want and wore out 
my silk ones before I got this." ^ In another 
letter she writes: "The present you sent me 
this month two years, I received a few weeks 
ago; 'tis a prize indeed. It came open, without 
direction or letter, and has come through three 
or four hands. I have received six pairs of 
gloves, nine papers of needles, a bundle of thread 
and five papers of pins. . . . The last person 
to whose care they were given left them at a 
hair-dresser's with directions not to send them 
to me till he was gone. Their being all open 
makes me suspect I have not all; what I have 
received makes me rich. I thought them long 
ago in the enemies' hands. The prices of every- 
thing here are so much raised that it takes a 
fortune to feed a family in a very plain way : a 
pair of gloves 7 dollars, one yard of common 
gauze 24 dollars, and there never was so much 
pleasure and dressing going on ; old friends meet- 
ing again, the Whigs in high spirits, and stran- 
gers of distinction among us. ... I have 

^ Letters to Benjamin Franklin from his Family and Friends, 
1751-1790, New York, 1859. 



60 ROMANTIC DAYS 

dined at the Minister's . . . and have lately 
been several times invited abroad with the 
General and Mrs. Washington. He always in- 
quires after you in the most affectionate manner 
and speaks of you highly. We danced at Mrs. 
Powell's your birthday, or night I should say, 
in company together, and he told me it was the 
anniversary of his marriage; it was just twenty 
years that night. 

" My boy and girl are in health. The latter 
has ten teeth, can dance, sing and make faces, 
tho' she cannot talk, except the words no and 
he done, which she makes great use of." 

Franklin's reply is amusing to those who re- 
flect how well the old gentleman was enjoying 
himself in France. " I was charmed," he de- 
clares, '' with the account you gave me of your 
industry, the tablecloths of your own spinning 
and so on; but the latter part of the paragraph, 
that you had sent for linen from France because 
weaving and flax were grown dear, alas! that 
dissolved the charm; and your sending for long 
black pins, and lace and feathers! disgusted me 
as much as if you had put salt into my straw- 
berries. The spinning, I see, is laid aside, and 
you are to be dressed for the ball I You seem not 
to know, my dear daughter, that, of all the 
dear things in this world, idleness is the dearest, 
except mischief. . . . When I began to read 
your account of the high prices of goods ... I 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 61 

expected you would conclude with telling me, 
that everybody as well as yourself was grown 
frugal and industrious; and I could scarce be- 
lieve my eyes, in reading forward, ' that there 
never was so much pleasure and dressing going 
on; ' and that you yourself wanted black pins 
and feathers from France to appear, I suppose, 
in the mode! This leads me to imagine, that 
perhaps it is not so much that the goods are 
grown dear as that money is grown cheap." 
Characteristically, Franklin had hit the mark. 
And, also characteristically, he then proceeds to 
send his daughter only the necessary articles for 
which she had asked, tagging thereto these terse 
observations: "If you wear [out] your cambric 
ruffles as I do and take care not to mend the 
holes, they will come in time to be lace; and 
feathers, my dear girl, — they may be had in 
America from every cock's tail." ^ 

A very famous Philadelphia institution, which 
dates from 1799 and of which one is reminded 
as one speaks of the great Franklin, was the 
salon for gentlemen, long held informally, on 
Sunday nights, under the hospitable High Street 
roof of that other distinguished American scien- 
tist. Dr. Caspar Wistar. These gatherings were 
destined to grow into the celebrated Wistar 
parties, expanding, in the course of years, from 
a few guests to a large club, from the friendliness 

» Works of Franklin, Sparks, Vol. VIII, p. 374. 



62 ROMANTIC DAYS 

of Sunday evenings to the more formal elegance 
of Saturdays, and from the cakes and wine no 
company of men ever found satisfying, to such 
" real food " as is consumed today at club gather- 
ings. In 1811 ice-cream, nuts and raisins con- 
stituted the " refreshments," but following the 
more formal organization of the Philosophical 
Society, after the death of Dr. Wistar in 1818, 
these airy trifles were abandoned for all time 
and the club began to gain that reputation 
for excellent and substantial dinners which 
made so deep an impression upon Thackeray 
at the time of his American visit. It was in 
honor of Dr. Wistar that Thomas Nuttall 
called the luxuriant vine, with its graceful 
clusters of purple flowers, now known the world 
over as wistaria. Dr. Wistar's country-seat 
was in Germantown. 

How so many Philadelphians who enter- 
tained largely could at this period live for any 
length of time each year " out of town " is a 
puzzle. For the streets were in a shocking con- 
dition and for a long while there were few car- 
riages.^ Even as late as 1797, if one may trust 
the figures given in the Travels of William Priest^ 
there were only eight hundred and six two and 
four wheel pleasure carriages in the whole city! 
Nor was walking a very popular means of trans- 

1 Watson mentions a Philadelphia belle who went to a ball in full 
dress on horseback. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 63 

portation, a fact the less to be wondered at when 
one learns that, until the dawn of the nineteenth 
century, absolutely no distinction was made by 
shoemakers between the right and left feet. A 
certain William Young, who lived at 128 Chest- 
nut Street, claimed to have introduced this valu- 
able improvement about 1800, and sometime 
afterwards his spouse promised that she would 
*' by the direction of her husband, cause her 
sex also to have right and left feet, — to stand 
and walk with facility and ease and pleasure. 
Why should not they be at ease as well as the 
gentlemen? " she demands. 

This early nineteenth century Philadelphia, 
had a shifting charm and alluring quaintness of 
its own which was by no American writer more 
truly appreciated than by Washington Irving. 
And although, from the very nature of things, 
Irving is more closely associated with old New 
York than with any other city, his memory is 
enduringly linked to the history of Philadel- 
phia, also, because Philadelphia was the home 
of Rebecca Gratz, whom Scott, through Irving, 
has made immortal as the " Rebecca " of Ivan- 
hoe. 

The tender affection which existed between 
Irving and Rebecca Gratz was largely owing to 
the fact that the Philadelphia Jewess had been 
the lifelong friend of Matilda Hoffman,^ Irving's 

* Miss Hoffman, was a relative, too, of Charles Jones Fenno. 



64 ROMANTIC DAYS 

first, last, and only love. Miss Hoffman died 
in April, 1809, at the age of eighteen, Miss Gratz, 
who was ten years her senior, holding her ten- 
derly in her arms. Irving was then twenty -six 
and he suffered poignantly. It happened that 
Rebecca Gratz had undergone a similar experi- 
ence, for she had lost through a drowning acci- 
dent Charles Jones Fenno, a young Christian 
whom she loved and who devotedly loved her. 
Inasmuch as several members of her family had 
already intermarried with the Clays, the Schuy- 
lers, and other Gentile families, it would not have 
been strange if this exquisite maiden with the 
lustrous black eyes had followed their example. 
But she refused Fenno in life, and after his death 
steadfastly said " no " to the ardent wooing of 
many other Christians because she considered 
herself spiritually his. Yet she continued to be 
the warm friend of the men and women of her 
lover's race and throughout her long life 
(she lived to be very old) was tenderly cher- 
ished by all those so fortunate as to know her 
well. 

The Gratz family mansion in Philadelphia was 
known far and wide as the center of a refined 
and elegant hospitality. Rebecca's brother, 
Hyman, was the founder of the Pennsylvania 
Academy of Fine Arts, and with him the lovely 
girl was wont to travel south in winter and to 
Saratoga Springs in summer always as the center 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 65 

of an admiring circle. Irving came often to be 
their guest, and through him it was that 
Thomas Sully, the painter, made Rebecca's 
acquaintance. Sully painted a portrait of her 
which is said to be one of his most success- 
ful works. Malbone, also, did a miniature of 
her. 

Very interesting personal recollections of Re- 
becca Gratz have come to me from Mrs. Tudor 
Hart, who, when she was about eight years old, 
went with her sister Delia Tudor (afterwards 
Mrs. Skip with Wilmer of Baltimore) and their 
mother, to visit Miss Gratz. " My mother," 
says my informant, " was the niece of Charles 
Fenno, and Miss Gratz's greeting to her was 
unforgettably touching in its tenderness and 
affection. Miss Gratz had a dignity of bearing 
quite royal in its aspect, although one felt it to 
be entirely natural and not assumed. Her in- 
dividuality was of such charm that it would be 
quite impossible for any one who had ever had 
the privilege of meeting her to forget the expe- 
rience. Her manner to my mother was very 
beautiful. With an indescribable tenderness 
(as to an own and dearly loved niece) she put 
her arm about her at meeting, kissed her most 
affectionately, and said ' Well, my dear, how 
are you? ' The words are not so much in them- 
selves, but to even a child on-looker they seemed 
to mean everything that was most intimately 



66 ROMANTIC DAYS 

affectionate and real. Moreover, those were not 
the days when one was more or less hugged and 
* my deared ' by nearly everybody. Times have 
changed; one is now quite likely to be ' my 
deared ' by the first strange shop-lady of whom 
one asks the price of a pair of stockings in any 
big department store! I do not say modern 
customs may not be in some respects better — 
but they are certainly different. 

" Miss Gratz, who was then seventy and who 
had not seen for many years this niece of her 
long-deceased lover, met my mother as one 
genuinely very near and dear to her, greeting 
her as though, since their meeting, there had 
been but a short lapse of time. The effect upon 
me, even as a young child, of her abiding affec- 
tion was extraordinary. Her personality, too, 
was, as I say, of a kind never to be forgotten. 
In stature she impressed one as being very tall, 
but whether this came from the fact that she 
was so in reality, or because of her extreme 
erectness and dignity of bearing, I cannot say. 
I remember, however, that on the day we dined 
with her and spent the evening at her house I 
was immensely impressed, as she preceded us 
to the dining-room, with her arrow-like erect- 
ness as well as with the more than sylph-like 
trimness of her waist-line. Her whole appear- 
ance and bearing were not those of an aged or 
even middle-aged woman, but of an ideal girl 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 67 

princess. Her eyes were large, singularly power- 
ful, and of piercing radiance; yet they had 
withal a mellow softness indescribably affect- 
ing to the beholder. Her complexion at that 
time was of a darkish and yet clear pallor — 
like the tint on the leaf of a pressed tea 
rose. 

" She was dressed in a very plain gown with- 
out ornament of any sort. Her hair was, or 
impressed one as being, of an intense blackness. 
Now I had not been ' primed up ' when taken 
to see Miss Gratz. I am not sure that my sister 
and I even Ivnew then that she was at all a re- 
markable person. We did know, I think, that 
she was a Jewish lady of wealth and good family 
who, although greatly attached to my great- 
uncle (who had died in early youth) and he to 
her, steadily refused marriage with him because 
of their difference in religion. We knew, also, 
that, when she heard he could not live, she went 
at once to him and nursed him faithfully un- 
til his death and that they (my great-uncle 
and she) had before this made a binding and 
solemn mutual agreement to devote their lives 
to good works and to the memory of their ill- 
starred love. 

" The whole story, as my mother had heard it, 
we were told later. Her uncle, Charles Fenno, 
and Rebecca Gratz had loved — not as in these 
modern days, as it were between flights in an 



68 ROMANTIC DAYS 

aeroplane from one divorce court to another, 
— but as in those days when people had time 
to form character and loved as they builded 
homes, — to have them last. True love was 
then felt to be too great and too real a thing to 
fill anything less than a lifetime. Miss Gratz 
always considered that there was a spiritual 
marriage; consequently the relatives of Charles 
Fenno were ever to her as her own people and 
were treated as such. When Julia Hoffman, a 
cousin of Charles Fenno's, was unexpectedly 
left destitute at her parent's death, Miss Gratz 
immediately took her into her own home, where 
she was always treated as a real relative would 
have been. This fact it may have been which 
gave rise to the report that there had been a 
marriage — a thing my mother, who must have 
known, always denied. 

" Now, as to the manner of Charles Fenno's 
death. He perished, when twenty -three, as a 
result of almost fabulously great exertions 
made, during a shipwreck, in the effort to save 
the life of a lady who was of no interest to him 
save for the fact that she was a woman and one 
whom no one else could or would risk trying to 
save. He was then put on shore to die. Life 
had, however, become of virtually no value to 
him, I feel. Having had the privilege of seeing 
Miss Gratz, I can quite understand that a man 
who had missed the happiness of a union with 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 69 

her could feel little joy in the prospect of a long 
life spent without her." 

A particularly tragic element in the renun- 
ciation of these two noble souls is brought out 
by the fact that certain members of the Fenno 
family have since believed that their line, too, 
was of Jewish origin! "Had they then been 
able to "prove this," declares Mrs. Hart (who 
seems herself quite to support the idea), " the 
fact that some individuals in the family had 
incidentally embraced Christianity would have 
been no real bar, even in Miss Gratz's mind, 
to her own union with Mr. Fenno. For it is 
first and foremost the race amalgamation which 
the religion of the Jew teaches him is the abom- 
ination of abominations in marriage and as such 
never to be entered into. 

" Altogether, a study of Miss Gratz's charac- 
ter is a peculiarly fascinating one — and also 
an illuminating one to many persons — the 
generality of people having no conception of the 
unusually strong spiritual side to some persons 
of pure Jewish origin, and this in spite of the 
fact that these high traits of character are by no 
means unusual among Hebrews of refined or 
exalted birth. George Eliot (Mrs. Lewes), who 
knew many Jews, has clearlj^ shown this in 
describing characters such as that of Daniel 
Deronda." 

The quiet elegance of life in Miss Gratz's 



70 ROMANTIC DAYS 

home made a deep impression upon the child. 
" I remember the exceedingly nice table ap- 
pointments," she says, " the good training of 
the servants, the style — though without os- 
tentation — in which everything was served. 
The dinner was a late one, too, a custom then 
almost unheard of in American families, save 
in a few of the most exclusive and the wealthi- 
est, and there was a butler to wait on table. 
One of the dishes was a sirloin roast of beef with 
shredded horse radish on top as served in Eng- 
land, and I remember how particularly delicious 
as well as tender the beef was. I mention this 
because I have so generally heard that all roast 
or boiled meats served by Jews are unpalatably 
tough. Another thing I had never seen before, 
and which particularly charmed me in Miss 
Gratz's house, was the serving of fruit after 
dinner in the drawing-room, to which it was 
brought by the butler, very daintily set out and 
arranged on a tray, in a way I had never then 
seen although our family was supposed to lead 
in Boston ^ in matters of luxury in table and 
other household appointments. The serving 
of the fruit in the drawing-room may not have 
been a customary thing with Miss Gratz, how- 
ever, but a tactful expedient for breaking the 

^ For a considerable account of the Tudor family, together with 
pictures of Charles Jones Fenno and Rebecca Gratz, see my Old 
Boston Days and Ways. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 71 

tedium of a long dinner to those two of 
her guests who were children/ It would 
have been like her to have devised some 
such plan to cater to the restlessness of the 
young." 

Though the story of the way in which Re- 
becca Gratz of Philadelphia came to be Scott's 
" Rebecca " has often been told, it seems of 
sufficient interest to be here repeated. Scott 
and Irving met for the first time in the fall of 
the year 1817, Scott being then forty-six and 
in the brilUancy of his early fame, and Irving 
thirty -four with a fast increasing literary repu- 
tation. They became warmly attached to each 
other, their conversation in due time turning, as 
even unens conversation occasionally does, to 
personal affairs. Irving spoke of Miss Hoffman 
and of the Jewish friend who had often visited 
her in New York. He described the latter's 
wonderful beauty, related the story of her firm 
adherence to her religion, and dwelt, as he well 
might, on her sweet and unselfish character. 
Scott was deeply interested and immediately 
decided to introduce a Jewish female character 
into Ivanhoe, the plot for which was then just 

1 Miss Gratz had brought up the two orphan children of her 
sister, Rachel Gratz Moses, a boy, and the girl who afterward married 
a Mr. Joseph in Canada and whose English grandson, some years 
ago, became Mrs. Tudor Hart's son-in-law. Thus a marriage 
actually took place, eventually, between two collateral descendant^ 
of the severed lovers. 



72 ROMANTIC DAYS 

shaping itself in his mind. The book was fin- 
ished in December, 1819, and the first copy was 
sent to Irving. With it went a letter asking 
" How do you like your Rebecca? Does the 
Rebecca I have pictured compare well with the 
pattern given? " Miss Gratz quite understood 
that she was the source of the character, a rela- 
tive of hers ^ asserts, but she always deftly 
changed the subject when allusion was made to 
the matter. 

^ Gratz Van Rensselaer in the Century Magazine of September, 

1882. 



CHAPTER II 

NEW YORK 

IF there is a town on the American conti- 
nent where Enghsh luxury displays its 
follies it is New York. In the dress of 
the women you will see the most brilliant silks, 
gauzes, hats and borrowed hair. . . . The men 
take their revenge in the luxury of the table." 
WTiich might, though penned so long ago,^ be 
a somewhat unkind characterization of the New 
York of our own day! 

Samuel Breck, however, though he wrote 
of almost the same time, gives us quite a differ- 
ent picture. " As a colonial town it was a 
place of considerable trade," he says, ** but we 
found it then [in 1787] a place of dilapidation. 
Having been in the hands of the enemy for 
seven years and visited during that time by an 
extensive conflagration ... it had not at all 
recovered from the effects of the war. New 
York in 1787 was but a poor place with about 
twenty-three thousand people. We anchored 
opposite a filthy little wooden shed called the 

* By Briasot de Waxville in 1766. 



74 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Fly Market, and when our boat reached the 
shore we had to climb up a wharf that was 
tumbling to pieces. Some twenty or thirty 
vessels lay at the other wharfs, and these shores 
that now exhibit a forest of masts and a stir 
of commerce surpassed in the whole world by 
two cities only [Mr. Breck was writing about 
1830 and his allusion is to London and Liver- 
pool] were then naked and silent." 

Happily, New York, then as now, had tre- 
mendous faith in its future greatness; and this 
faith it was which enabled it so quickly to 
rebuild itself and so impressively to enlarge 
its commerce that, in spite of its deficiencies 
and limitations, it seemed the logical place in 
which to establish the nation's capital. Soon 
after 1785 stage lines had begun to connect the 
city with Albany, Boston, and Philadelphia, 
and though the journey from the New England 
capital occupied six days, traveling from three 
o'clock in the morning until ten at night (!) a 
good many people essayed the trip, and business 
at New York grew apace. 

Taverns naturally played an important part 
in the life of that staging day, one of the most 
interesting being Fraunces' Tavern, at the south- 
east corner of Pearl and Broad Streets, a hos- 
telry which, though it has been, since 1904, 
the property of the Sons of the Revolution, 
still welcomes guests for excellent dinners just 




T-RAUNCES' TAVERX IN 1S67. IN ITS LONG ROOM WASHINGTON TOOK HIS 
FAMOUS FAREWELL OF HIS OFFICERS. 




THE ATHEN^UM WASHINGTON OP STUART. 

From the original in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 75 

as it did in Colonial days. Here it was that 
Washington took his famous farewell of his 
officers. The scene of this historic occurrence 
was in the " Long Room " of the Tavern on 
the second floor and the time was December 4, 
1783, ten days after the defeated British army 
had marched sullenly down Broadway to take 
their departure by boats. 

General Washington rode to the Tavern on 
horseback, and " we had been assembled but 
a few moments," says Col. Benjamin Talmadge 
in his Memoirs, " when his Excellency entered 
the room. His emotion, too strong to be con- 
cealed, seemed to be reproduced by every officer 
present. After partaking of a slight refreshment 
in almost breathless silence, the General filled 
his glass with wine and, turning to the officers, 
said with a heart full of love and gratitude, 
' I now take leave of you. I most devoutly 
wish that your latter days may be as prosperous 
and as happy as your former ones have been 
glorious and honourable.' After the officers 
had taken a glass of wine, the General added, 
* I cannot come to each of you, but shall be 
obliged if each of you will come and take me 
by the hand.' General Knox being nearest 
to him, turned to the Commander in Chief, who, 
suffused in tears, was incapable of utterance, 
but grasped his hand when they embraced 
each other in silence. In the same affectionate 



76 ROMANTIC DAYS 

manner every oflScer in the room marched up 
to, kissed and parted with his Commander in 
Chief. Such a scene of sorrow and weeping 
I had never before witnessed, and I hope may 
never be called upon to witness again. Not a 
word was uttered to break the solemn silence 
that presided or to interrupt the tenderness of 
the scene. The simple thought that we were 
about to part with the man who had conducted 
us through a long and bloody war and under 
whose conduct the glory and the independence 
of our country had been achieved, and that we 
should see his face no more in this world, 
seemed to be utterly insupportable. Already 
the time of separation had come, and waving 
his hand to his grieving children around him, 
he left the room, and passing through a corps 
of light infantry who were paraded to receive 
him, he walked silently to Whitehall, where a 
barge was waiting. We all followed in mourn- 
ful silence to the wharf, where a prodigious 
crowd had assembled to witness the departure 
of the man who, under God, had been the great 
agent in establishing the glory and independence 
of these United States. As soon as he was seated 
the barge put off into the river, and when out 
in the stream our great and beloved General 
waved his hat and bade us a silent adieu." 
Samuel Fraunces, though a West Indian by 
birth, had proved a staunch friend of the patriot 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 77 

cause when the Revolution broke out and had 
worthily played his part in the stirring events 
of the time. He was one of the first whom 
Washington in his successful days rewarded. 
For when the general who had bidden his officers 
farewell in the Long Room of Fraunces' Tavern 
returned to New York to be inaugurated Pres- 
ident of the United States, he promptly made 
Fraunces steward of his household, a post for 
which the Boniface was admirably fitted and 
which he filled with satisfaction to all concerned. 
Sometimes, to be sure, he was over-zealous 
in his desire to provide for the President's 
table the best the market afforded. 

Once, as related by Mr. Griswold in his 
'* Republican Court," he brought home from 
the old Fly Market a fine shad for which, be- 
cause it was early in the season, he had to pay 
a very good price. The next morning the fish 
was duly served in the best style for breakfast 
and Washington had no sooner seated himself 
at table than he sniffed its delicate fragrance 
and asked what they had there. " A fine shad/' 
replied the steward. "Indeed," said Washing- 
ton, " it's early for shad, isn't it? How much did 
you pay for it? " " Two dollars." " Two 
dollars! " echoed the head of the nation, aghast. 
" Two dollars for a fish! Take it away. I can- 
not encourage such extravagance at my table. 
I shall not touch it." The shad was accordingly 



78 ROMANTIC DAYS 

removed, and Fraunces, who had no such 
economical scruples, made a hearty meal upon 
it in his own room. 

The Fly Market referred to in this anecdote 
seems at first glance to bear very little relation- 
ship to the Valley for which it was named. But 
V'ly or Fly was recognized by all good Knicker- 
bockers to be an abbreviation of valley and re- 
ferred to Maiden Lane,^ the Valley where the 
Dutch maidens used to wash their linen in early 
New York times. The transition to Fly came 
from the fact that the Dutch burghers pro- 
nounced their v's like f's. A whole chapter 
might be written on the butchers of the Fly 
Market, one of whom was no less a person than 
Henry Astor, elder brother of John Jacob Astor, 
and an important factor in the establishment 
of the better known New Yorker's fortune. 

The New York house in which Washington 
took up his residence, when he came to the city 
in 1789 as the nation's first President, was that 
on the corner of Cherry and Franklin Streets, 
near Franklin Square, referred to varyingly as 
number 10, and as number 3 Cherry Street, 
and known as the Franklin house. ^ It is 
difficult from contemporary writers to get any 
true idea as to the kind of house it was, for the 
Quakers called it a " Palace," while the French 

' Jefferson resided at 57 Maiden Lane after his return from France. 
^ The site is now occupied by one of the piers of Brooklyn bridge. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 79 

Minister, writing to his home government 
about it, spoke of it as " a humble dweUing." 
Categorically, the house was of brick, had three 
stories and was amply lighted by a number of 
small-paned windows. A heavy brass knocker 
was on the single paneled front door, which 
wa.s reached by one of the two short flights of 
steps leading up from the sidewalk on either 
side of a tiny porch. For a private citizen it was 
a large house, but for Washington's official 
residence it soon proved to be inadequate. 
What with offices and reception rooms and 
sleeping accommodations for ex-aides and private 
secretaries — five in all — as well as for his 
foster-children, Nellie and George Washington 
Parke Custis, the " Palace " was badly crowded 
from the first. 

As soon as Mrs. Washington arrived system- 
atic entertaining began: levees, dinners and 
Drawing Rooms, — all of which provoked ad- 
verse criticism on the ground that they were 
" aristocratical." The levees were appointed 
at first for two days weekly — Tuesday and 
Friday — from two to three; later, for one 
day only, Tuesday, from three to four. Ladies 
were not expected at these particular functions, 
nor were gentlemen — unless their standing 
was of a certain importance. The master of 
ceremonies on these occasions was Col. Hum- 
phreys, and there is a story that once he tricked 



80 ROMANTIC DAYS 

the President into receiving in great state by 
throwing open the door of the presence-room 
and exclaiming " The President of the United 
States! " Washington was tremendously dis- 
concerted, and after that levee saw to it that 
his receptions were simplicity itself. Standing 
in a room from which the chairs had been re- 
moved, he was then wont to greet very simply 
the guests who came up to him and made their 
silent bow. One hand held his cocked hat on 
these occasions, and the other probably rested 
on the hilt of his sword. For he did not shake 
hands as visitors were presented and, when all 
had arrived, he passed from one guest to another 
chatting for a few minutes with each. 

The weekly dinners of state on Thursdays 
at four in the afternoon were much more im- 
pressive. Fraunces then prepared delicious 
and wonderful things for the delectation of 
the invited guests, who numbered from ten 
to twenty-two persons besides the " family." 
(The private secretaries were always present.) 
Roast beef, veal, lamb, turkey, duck and varie- 
ties of game, with jelly, fruit, nuts and raisins, 
were wont on these occasions to be placed upon 
the table before the guests came in. But there 
was careful attention to the appearance of the 
viands and upon the central table, set off by a 
long mirror made in sections and framed in 
silver, were usually shown " chaste mytho- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 81 

logical statuettes." To serve the guests half 
a dozen or more waiters were on hand wearing 
the brilliant Washington livery. Mrs. Washing- 
ton, rather oddly, usually sat at the head of 
the table, and Mr. Lear, the President's private 
secretary, at the foot. The President himself 
was always at the side of the table in the middle. 
Receiving an invitation to one of these dinners 
appears not to have been considered a command, 
as is now the case. For we find in Washington's 
diary enumeration of the guests invited at 
different times, and once (July 1, 1790) this 
note is added: 

" The Chief Justice and his lady. Gen. 
Schuyler, and Mrs. Izard were also invited, but 
were otherwise engaged." 

A vivid description of one of these presidential 
dinners has come down to us in the Journal of 
William Maclay, senator from Pennsylvania. 
Mr. Maclay found little to his liking in public 
life and his comments on the men and manners 
of the time are often delightfully caustic. John 
Adams he bitterly hated, Alexander Hamilton 
he frankly despised, and Morris he appears to 
have distrusted though his relations with him, 
as a fellow-Pennsylvanian, were on the surface 
more or less friendly. The Maclay Journal, 
because written down day by day while the 
events therein recorded were fresh in the writer's 
mind, is most entertaining reading. For Senator 



82 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Maclay never slighted trifles, as many another 
man would have done in his place. Who else 
would have cherished for us that delectable bit 
of gossip, related at her own table by Mrs. 
Morris, to the effect that once, when she had 
been dining at the President's, the sauce of an 
elegant-looking entree had proved to be made 
with " cream so rancid that, on taking some of 
it, she had to pass her handkerchief to her mouth 
and rid herself of the morsel; on which she 
whispered the fact to the President . . . and he 
changed his plate immediately. ' But,' added 
Mrs. Morris with a titter, ' Mrs. Washington 
ate a whole heap of it .^ ' " 

The senator's own invitation to dine at the 
President's table did not come until two months 
later than this. Perhaps Mrs. Washington, 
suspecting his critical tendencies, had waited 
to be quite sure all would be as it should. Such, 
at any rate, appears to have been the case, for 
Mr. Maclay cordially pronounces the dinner, 
"the best of the kind I ever was at!" He 
characteristically adds, however, that " the 
room was disagreeably warm." As why should 
it not be in New York City at four o'clock of 
an August afternoon .^^ The full list of those 
present on this occasion were: *' President and 
Mrs. Washington, Vice-President and Mrs. 
Adams, the Governor and his wife, Mr. Jay 
and wife, Mr. Langdon and wife, Mr. Dalton 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 83 

and a lady (perhaps his wife) and a Mr. Smith, 
Mr. Bassett of the Delaware State, myself, 
Lear, Lewis, the President's two secretaries. 
The President and Mrs. Washington sat op- 
posite each other in the middle of the table; 
the two secretaries, one at each end. First 
was the soup; fish roasted and boiled; meats, 
gammon [smoked ham], fowls, etc. This was 
the dinner. The middle of the table was gar- 
nished in the usual tasty way, with small 
images, artificial flowers, etc. The dessert was, 
first apple-pies, pudding, etc., then iced creams, 
jellies, etc.; then water-melons, musk-melons, 
apples, peaches, nuts. 

" It was the most solemn dinner ever I sat 
at. Not a health drank, scarce a word said 
until the cloth was taken away. Then the 
President, filling a glass of wine, with great 
formality drank to the health of every individual 
by name around the table. Everybody imi- 
tated him and charged glasses and such a 
buzz of ' health, sir,' and ' health, madam,' and 
' thank you, sir,' and ' thank you, madam ' 
never had I heard before. Indeed I had liked 
to have been thrown out in the hurry; but I 
got a little wine in my glass and passed the 
ceremony. The ladies sat a good while and the 
bottles passed about; but there was a dead 
silence almost. Mrs. Washington at last with- 
drew with the ladies. 



84 ROMANTIC DAYS 

" I expected the men would now begin but 
the same stillness remained. The President 
told of a New England clergyman who had lost 
a hat and wig in passing a river called the Brunks. 
He smiled and everybody else laughed. [Is 
there a joke here.^ He now and then said a 
sentence or two on some common subject and 
what he said was not amiss [Oh, grudging Mr. 
Maclay ! ] Mr. Jay tried to make a laugh by 
mentioning the circumstance of the Duchess of 
Devonshire leaving no stone unturned to carry 
Fox's election. [It will be recalled that she bar- 
tered kisses for votes.] There was a Mr. Smith 
who mentioned how Homer described ^Eneas 
leaving his wife and carrying his father out of 
flaming Troy. He had heard somebody (I 
suppose) witty on the occasion; but if he had 
ever read it he would have said Virgil. The 
President kept a fork in his hand, when the 
cloth was taken away, I thought for the pur- 
pose of picking nuts. He ate no nuts, how- 
ever, but played with the fork, striking on 
the edge of the table with it. We did not sit 
long after the ladies retired. The President 
rose, went up-stairs to drink coffee; the com- 
pany followed. I took my hat and came 
home." 

Nor had the senator from Pennsylvania any 
more enthusiastic praise for the levees. "At 
such meetings," he wrote, " nothing is regarded 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 85 

or valued but the qualifications that flow from 
the tailor, barber, or dancing-master. To be 
clean shaved, shirted and powdered, to make 
your bows with grace and to be master of small 
chat on the weather, play, or newspaper anec- 
dote of the day, are the highest qualifications 
necessary. Levees may be extremely useful 
in old countries where men of great fortune 
are collected, as it may keep the idle from being 
much worse employed. But here I think they 
are hurtful. . . . From these small beginnings 
I fear we shall follow on nor cease till we have 
reached the summit of court etiquette, and all 
the frivolities, fopperies and expense practiced 
in European governments." It is scarcely 
necessary to add, after citing these two passages 
from Mr. Maclay's Journal, that the senator 
from Pennsylvania was no longer young, found 
himself very forlorn away from his home and 
family — and suffered torture with rheuma- 
tism. 

Mrs. Washington's Drawing Rooms, held 
from seven till nine on Friday evenings, were 
stately and interesting. Attended by all that 
was fashionable, elegant, and refined in the 
society of that day, " there was, none the less, 
no place for the intrusion of the rabble in crowds, 
or for the mere coarse and boisterous partisan, 
the vulgar electioneerer, or the impudent place- 
hunter." Mrs. Washington was quite as careful 



86 ROMANTIC DAYS 

to have only the right people at her parties as 
was her husband at his. 

The President, at these Friday evening re- 
ceptions, signified, by carrying neither sword 
nor hat, that he was only " unofficially present.'* 
Precisely at seven o'clock he would enter the 
room and take his stand beside Mrs. Washing- 
ton. Ladies, attended always by gentlemen, 
then came in, courtesied low and silently, and 
sat down. When the guests had ceased to 
arrive, the President walked about and talked 
to the interested women. The one exciting in- 
cident which has come down to us regarding 
these Drawing Rooms is connected with Miss 
Mary Mclvers, a noted belle, who on a certain 
occasion wore an ostrich feather head-dress 
so monstrously tall that it caught fire from the 
candles of the chandelier, as Miss Mclvers 
stood happily talking in the centre of the room. 
The " hero " of this occasion was Major Jack- 
son, aid-de-camp to the President, who flew 
to the rescue, clapped the burning plumes in 
his hands, and saved the lady with all possible 
gallantry. " There was no undue rustling of 
stiff brocades or ruffling of pretty manners," 
comments Miss Leila Herbert,^ " for it was then, 
as now, good form for ladies to be perturbed 
only by mice and cows." 

The costumes worn by these well-bred ladies 

^ The First American, p. 55. 




MARTHA WASHINGTON. 



From the portrait by James Savage in the possession of Brooks Adams, Quincij, Massa- 
chusetts. 







K 



-p ii 



^ 



t ^'-i u 







R8hfeii'iihinrBMll>Miii i'i'^^'^~1-'imf^iMrii~"' 

1. HOUSES OPPOSITE BOMLING GREEN ON BROADWAY. 



2. MACOMB HOUSE, WASHINGTON'S SECOND NEW YORK RESIDENCE 
WHILE PRESIDENT. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 87 

and gentlemen must have gone far to compel 
elegant behavior. Washington was wont to 
appear in purple satin or drab broadcloth, — 
when not arrayed in black velvet set off with 
shining buttons, — pearl satin waistcoat, fine 
linen and lace. And Mrs. Washington, though 
buxom and not very tall, by carefully chosen 
gowns and a peculiar head-dress known, ac- 
cording to Watson's Annals, as the " Queen's 
Nightcap " added height to her appearance 
and so enhanced the impression of gentle dignity 
which she never failed to convey. 

It is doubtless due to Mrs. W^ashington's 
slight stature rather than to the facts of the 
matter that we find her represented in Hunting- 
ton's famous picture of the Republican Court 
as standing upon a slight elevation above most 
of her guests. Some of her particular friends 
are near her in this picture — and some who 
were not actually in New York at the time the 
painting was made are here also! Similarly 
Nellie Custis and George Washington Parke 
Custis, both of whom were far too young to 
have been present at a formal Drawing Room, 
save for the purpose of having their portraits 
painted, stand — in the canvas — close to their 
grandmother. Mrs. Robert Morris, Mrs. John 
Jay, Lady Kitty Duer, Mrs. Ralph Izard, Mrs. 
James Beekman, Mrs. George Clinton, Mrs. 
Robert R. Livingston, Mrs. Walter Livingston, 



88 ROMAXTIC DAYS 

Mrs. John Bayard, and Mrs. Alexander Ham- 
ilton were other of the ladies in Mrs. Washing- 
ton's immediate circle; the faces of many of 
them may be distinguished in the picture. 
But there are some rather startling anachro- 
nisms in the work. General Xathanael Greene, 
who died before the new government was even 
instituted, is there as large as life, and the Duke 
of Orleans, afterwards King of the French, is 
represented as making his bow to Mrs. Washing- 
ton at the same time that the Duke of Kent, 
father of the late Queen Victoria, was likewise 
so engaged. This in spite of the fact that the 
two dukes were in America at quite different 
times. Inasmuch, however, as the painting 
is extraordinarily accurate in the matter of 
costumes, as well as with regard to the faces and 
figures represented, the net result is of great his- 
torical interest. The background of the work is 
the second New York residence of the Washing- 
tons, the Macomb house on Broadway, to which 
they removed in the spring of 1790, after the Presi- 
dent returned from his tour of the Eastern States. 

" Courts," it may here be said, were not at 
all to Mrs. Washington's taste, nor did the label 
of " Republican " serve to make her particular 
brand of " court " acceptable; we have ample 
assurance that she would " much rather have 
been at home " ^ than officiating in New York 

^ So she wrote once in a letter to Mercy Warren. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 89 

as First Lady of the Land. To Mrs. Fanny- 
Washington, then keeping house at Mt. Vernon, 
she wrote: 

" New York, October 22, 1789." 
" My Dear Fanny, — I have by Mrs. 
Sims sent you a watch; it is one of the cargoe, 
that I have so long mentioned to you that was 
expected, I hope it is such a one as will please 
you — it is of the newest fashion if that has any 
influence on your taste, the chain is of Mr. 
Lear's choosing and such as Mrs. Adams the 
Vice president's lady and those in the polite circle 
wear. 

" Mrs. Sims will give you a better account of 
the fashions than I can — I live a very dull 
life hear and know nothing that passes in the 
town — I never goe to any public place — in- 
deed I think I am more like a State prisoner than 
anything else; there is certain bounds set for 
me which I must not depart from — and as I 
cannot doe as I like I am obstinate and stay at 
home a great deal. 

" The President set out this day week on a 
tour to the eastward; Mr. Lear and Mr. Jack- 
son attended him — my dear children has had 
very bad colds but thank God they are getting 
better. My love and good wishes attend you 
and all with you — remember me to Mr. and 
Mrs. L. Wn [Lund Washington] how is the poor 



90 ROMANTIC DAYS 

child — kiss Marie, I send her two Httle handker- 
chiefs to wipe her nose. Adue." 

The President, too, appears to have been home- 
sick very often while in New York. Writing 
to a friend in Virginia, who had alluded to ru- 
mors of presidential pomp, he explains that the 
real reason his Tuesday callers do not sit down 
is because the room would not hold enough chairs 
— even if sitting at such times had been the 
custom. The dignity of office, he adds, has 
" God knows no charms for me. I had rather 
be at Mount Vernon with a friend or two about 
me, than to be attended at the seat of govern- 
ment by the officers of state and the representa- 
tives of every power in Europe." As evidence 
that extreme simplicity in his domestic life 
was the note he would have preferred to sustain 
we have Judge Wingate's description of the 
first presidential dinner: " The President made 
his whole dinner upon a boiled leg of mutton. 
It was his usual practice to eat of but one dish. 
As there was no chaplain present the President 
himself said a very short grace as he was sitting 
down. After the dinner and dessert were finished 
one glass of wine was passed around the table 
and no toast. ..." 

It was while living in the Franklin house that 
Washington, at the request of Congress, wrote 
our first Thanksgiving proclamation, setting 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 91 

apart for that festival a Thursday of November, 
1789. Here, too, the first New Year's reception 
of the head of the American nation was held. 
Writes Washington in his diary: 

" The Vice-President, the Governor, the 
Senators, Members of the House of Represen- 
tatives in town, foreign public characters, and 
all the respectable citizens came between the 
hours of twelve and three o'clock to pay the 
compliments of the season to me; and in the 
afternoon a great number of gentlemen and 
ladies visited Mrs. Washington on the same 
occasion." 

In the February of 1790 the presidential 
family moved to the larger house they had long 
felt to be necessary. Thus it is with the Macomb 
residence on Broadway that Washington's 
later months in New York are to be associated. 
This house was the finest private dwelling in 
the city and commanded from the rear a delight- 
ful view of the Hudson and the Jersey shore. 
It was now easy for Washington to slip out of 
his back door, clad in his old clothes, and go 
fishing, when he wished so to relieve the strain 
of his public and official duties. As a fisherman 
he was as successful as in his various other ac- 
tivities. " All the fish come to his hook," 
the captain who was wont to take him out once 
declared. The Washingtons' stay in the spacious 
Macomb house was only a short one however. 



92 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Scarcely six months after they had there taken 
up their residence it was decided that Phila- 
delphia should for some years be the capital 
city in New York's stead and so, once again, 
the presidential family must " move." The 
General had hoped to slip away quietly, un- 
observed by the crowd — whom he loved, yet 
dreaded. Imagine his chagrin, therefore, 
when, just as he was congratulating himself 
that his plot to conceal his departure by getting 
off early in the morning had succeeded, the 
raucous notes of an artillery band were heard 
under his office window, accompanied by the 
scurrying footsteps of a thousand devoted 
people come to watch their beloved chief as 
he took his departure from America's first 
capital. 

But though New York had ceased to be the 
seat of the national assembly, it remained, as 
it was bound to do, the commercial and hence 
the real social centre of American life. Wash- 
ington, with his astounding sense of compara- 
tive values, prophesied that such must be the 
case. To Richard Parkinson, whom he was enter- 
taining at his home in Mt. Vernon, he said: 
*' Baltimore would be the risingest town in 
America except the Federal City, Philadelphia 
would decline; but New York would always 
maintain eminent commercial rank from its 
position and from the frost not stopping the 



! 



if'E 




THE merchants' EXCHANGE, NEW YORK, ABOUT IH',60. 
From a drawino by C. Burton. 




Photograph by the PhilUps .Studio. 

MRS. CHAUNCEY GOODRICH. 

From a miniature in the possession of Charles A. Brinley 
of Philadelphia. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 93 

navigation so early and sometimes not at all." 
With the commercial development of New 
York — or, indeed, of any city — this book 
is not particularly concerned; but we must not 
ignore the fact that to the wealth which this 
development made possible is due much of the 
brilliancy and charm of early Republican so- 
ciety. 

When Chauncey Goodrich of New York mar- 
ried Mary Ann Wolcott of Connecticut and 
brought her (October, 1789) to his native city 
to live for a time, one more very beautiful 
woman was to be found in Knickerbocker 
drawing-rooms. The Wolcott women appear 
to have all been belles. The wife of Oliver Wol- 
cott of Connecticut (who was, first, Auditor 
of the Treasury, and later succeeded Hamilton 
as Secretary) had less beauty but was noted 
for her graceful manners, and few could be 
compared with her for culture and refinement. 
When the British minister remarked to Tracy 
at a dance: "Your countrywoman, Mrs. 
Wolcott, would be admired even at St. James's," 
the senator replied, " Sir, she is admired even 
on Litchfield Hill." A member of Congress 
called this lady a "divine woman"; another 
"the magnificent Mrs. Wolcott"; and some 
compared her to Mrs. Bingham. 

Second to none of the New York women, 
either native or imported, in beauty and charm 



94 ROMANTIC DAYS 

was Mrs. John Jay, born Sarah Livingston. 
She it was who was mistaken for Queen Marie 
Antoinette once, upon entering the theatre in 
Paris. Just before the outbreak of the Revolu- 
tion, being then eighteen, she had married John 
Jay, a young lawyer of very good family con- 
nection, who was called almost at once to 
take an important public ofl&ce. Subsequently 
for some years his services to his country kept 
him from the side of his lovely wife, who passed 
the greater part of her time at the residence of 
her father, with occasional visits to her husband's 
parents at their country place in Rye, West- 
chester County, New York. When Mr. Jay 
was appointed minister to Spain in 1779 his 
wife went with him, however, and when Con- 
gress decreed that Mr. Jay should go to Paris 
to help Franklin negotiate peace treaties, Mrs. 
Jay was launched at once into the most brilliant 
Paris circles of the day. For the Queen, whom 
she so strikingly resembled, Mrs. Jay had a 
warm admiration. To Mrs. Robert Morris 
she wrote (November 14, 1782), " She is so 
handsome and her manner so engaging that, 
almost forgetful of Republican principles, I 
was ready, while in her presence, to declare her 
born to be a queen. There are, however, many 
traits in her character worthy of imitation, 
even by Republicans; and I cannot but admire 
her resolution to superintend the education of 



o 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 95 

Madame Royale, her daughter, to whom she 
has allotted chambers adjoining her own, and 
persists in refusing to name a governess for 
her." 

Among the first to welcome Mrs. Jay to 
Paris were the Marquis and Marchioness de 
Lafayette. The acquaintanceship between the 
ladies soon ripened into friendship and their 
letters are marked by a tone of sineere affection. 
John Adams's daughter, writing from Paris 
in 1785, tells us that Madame de Lafayette said 
that " she and Mrs. Jay were agreed that, 
while pleasure might be found abroad, happiness 
was to be had only at home and in the society 
of one's family and friends." 

In the Franklin circle at Passy the charming 
American was a prime favorite. The " Sage," 
as Mirabeau afterwards dubbed him, had lost 
neither his love of beauty nor his taste in judg- 
ing of it, even though he was seventy-six at 
this time. He was constantly surrounded by 
the fair women and gifted men of the day and 
the letters which passed between him and Mrs. 
Jay (and which Mrs. Ellet reprints in her 
Queens of American Society) give us vivid 
glimpses of social life in the Paris of that day. 
Before Mrs. Jay left Madrid he had sent her 
his portrait with these words: " Mrs. Jay does 
me much honour in desiring to have one of the 
prints that have been ma,de of her countryman. 



96 ROMANTIC DAYS 

I send what has been said to be the best of 
five or six engraved by different hands from 
different paintings. The verses at the bottom 
are truly extravagant. But you must know 
that the desire of pleasing by a perpetual use 
of compliments in this polite nation has so 
used up all the common expressions of appro- 
bation that they have become flat and insipid 
and to use them almost implies censure. Hence 
music, which formerly might be sufficiently 
praised when it was called bonne, to go a little 
farther they called excellente, then superbe, 
magnifique, exquisite, celeste, all of which being 
in their turn worn out there remains only 
divine, and when that is grown as insufficient a-s 
its predecessors I think they must return to 
common speech and common sense, as from 
vying with one another in fine and costly paint- 
ings on their coaches, since I first knew the 
country, not being able to go further in that 
way, they have returned lately to plain carriages, 
painted without arms or figures in one uniform 
colour." 

Here is another of the Doctor's little notes: 
" Dr. Franklin regrets exceedingly that his 
health does not permit the honour and pleasure 
of waiting upon Mr. and Mrs. Jay according to 
their obliging invitation. He hopes Mr. and 
Mrs. Jay will condescend to indemnify him for 
the loss he sustains by honouring him with their 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 97 

company at dinner on Saturday next. The 
doctor would be happy to see Mr. Munroe [their 
nephew] at the same time. Passy 9th October, 
1782." 

There has been preserved for us, also, in 
connection with Mr. and Mrs. Jay, a charming 
account of one of FrankHn's experiments in 
magnetism. To her husband, absent at Bath, 
the lady wrote, November 18, 1783: "Dr. 
Franklin charged me to present you his com- 
pliments, whenever I write to you, but forbids 
my telling you how much pains he takes to 
excite my jealousy at your stay. The other 
evening, at Passy, he produced several pieces 
of steel; the one he supposed you at Chaillot, 
which, being placed near another piece, which 
was to represent me, it was attracted by that 
and presently united ; but when drawn off from 
me and near another piece, which the doctor 
called an English lady, behold the same effect! 
The company enjoyed it much and urged me 
to revenge; but all could not shake my confi- 
dence in my beloved friend." 

The *' friend " appears to have taken this 
excellent fooling in very good part, for he replies, 
" It gives me pleasure to hear that our friend, 
the Doctor, is in such good spirits. Though his 
magnets love society, they are nevertheless 
true to the pole, and in that I hope I resemble 
them." Which shows that this early Repub- 



98 ROMANTIC DAYS 

lican husband, though nine years removed from 
courting days, had not lost the power to write 
love-letters to his wife. 

The warm friendship between the Jays and 
Doctor Franklin was never allowed to lapse. 
Affectionate notes from the Sage of Passy 
came to them often after they had returned to 
America, and, when Franklin himself returned. 
Jay welcomed him in a cordial letter. In refer- 
ence to the Doctor's proposed visit to New York 
he declared, " Mrs. Jay is exceedingly pleased 
with this idea, and sincerely joins with me in 
wishing to see it realized. Her attachments 
are very strong and that to you being founded 
on esteem, and the recollection of kind offices, 
is particularly so." 

The absence from New York of the Jays for 
nearly five years (they returned in the summer 
of 1784) had only tended to make them more 
welcome as social leaders of the day. To 
beauty and sweet womanliness Mrs. Jay now 
added the cosmopolitan polish bestowed by 
long residence near European courts. From 
her " Dinner and Supper List for 1787 and '8," 
which chances to have been preserved we see 
that the most cultivated men and women of the 
day, whether Europeans on visits over here or 
residents of other American cities who chanced 
to be in New York, were entertained by her. 
Among the older families of New York men- 





MRS. JOHN JAY. 

From the painting by Daniel Huntimjton, enlnryed from a miniature in a bracelet. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 99 

tioned in her list the names of the Beekmans, 
the Bronsons, the Chntons, the Clarksons, the 
Crugers, the SterHngs, the De Peysters, the 
Livingstons, the Morrises, the Rutherfurds, 
the Schuylers, the Van Homes, the Van Cort- 
landts, the Van Rensselaers, the Verplancks 
and the Watts, constantly occur. The letters 
and diaries of the time, too, are full of allusions 
to hospitalities enjoyed at the home of the 
Jays, a three-story dwelling of hewn stone which 
stood at what was then 133 Broadway. 

In the spring of 1794 Mr. Jay, who for some 
time had been Chief Justice, was sent by Wash- 
ington as special ambassador to England to 
negotiate with Lord Grenville the treaty which 
bears his name. At Mrs. Jay's earnest request 
their young son, Peter Augustus, then in his 
nineteenth year, accompanied his father on 
this expedition. But that the wife and mother 
left behind was soon suffering sorely from fears 
for the safety of her two beloved ones we see 
from this letter: 

*' Oh, my dear Mr. Jay, how greatly do 
circumstances alter our ideas of things. I've 
known the time when in your company I could 
have enjoyed a storm like this. At present I 
cannot nor would I wish to describe the painful 
fancies it gives birth to. I know you disap- 
prove the anticipation of evils, but, indeed, my 
best of husbands, such a storm as this is enough 



100 ROMANTIC DAYS 

to prostrate one's reason. At this season of 
the year it is so unusual. The poplars this 
morning were on the ground and the cherries, 
still unripe, were blown from the trees before 
the dining-room window into the stable-yard. 
Frank has raised the poplars. When I droop 
who shall raise me, if the wide ocean should 
swallow up my husband and child ? " 

Happily, however, no such catastrophe oc- 
curred. Mr. Jay returned home in safety, hav- 
ing acquitted himself with honor to his country, 
and subsequently for two terms served his state 
as Governor. The young son, too, benefited 
greatly by the experience, just as his mother 
had thought he would, and came back to take 
up his place in the New York of his day and 
to be married to the lovely daughter of General 
Clarkson, whose home was on Pearl Street. The 
following account of their wedding has come down 
to us: 

" The company assembled about ha If -past 
seven, and were received in the drawing-room, 
which was on the north side of the house on the 
second floor, its three windows looking out upon 
Pearl Street. Among the guests were Governor 
Jay, Miss Anne Brown, the Rutherfurds, Bay- 
ards, Le Roys, Van Homes, Munroes, Wallaces 
and others. Bishop Moore arrived a quarter 
before eight, and at eight the bride, followed by 
her bridesmaids, entered the room and was re- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 101 

ceived by the groom and his attendants. The 
bridesmaids were the Misses Anne Jay, Helen 
Rutherfurd, Anna Maria Clarkson, Corneha Le 
Roy and Susan and Catharine Bayard. The 
groomsmen were Robert Watts, Jr., John Cox 
Morris, Dominick Lynch, George Wechman, 
Benjamin Ledyard and B. Woolsey Rogers. 

" The bride was dressed in white silk covered 
with white crape or gauze. Pearls adorned her 
hair, encircled her neck and were clasped around 
her arms. Her maids wore white muslin, made 
in the style of the Empire and embroidered in 
front, and each carried a fan, a present from the 
bride. * Drab flesh-colored ' small clothes, flesh- 
colored silk stockings, white vests and coats 
varying in color to suit the taste of the wearer 
made up the attire of the gentlemen, which 
corresponded with that of the groom, whose 
coat was of a light color. The ceremony was 
then performed by the Bishop, and Mrs. Jay 
received the congratulations of her friends. 

" A great variety of refreshments was then 
handed round on trays by colored waiters, and 
in the dining room below, upon a side table, a 
collation was spread of which the elderly people 
partook. The groomsmen drank a bottle of 
wine together before separating, and the eve- 
ning's festivities were over at twelve o'clock. 
On the next day Mr. and Mrs. Jay went on a 
visit to Edgerston, on the Passaic, a little above 



102 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Belleville, the residence of Hon. John Rutherfurd. 
On Saturday Mrs. Rutherfurd entertained the 
bridal party at a breakfast, and on Monday 
they returned to the city. Mr. Jay received 
his friends on the morning of the succeeding 
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and Mrs. 
Jay's receptions were in the evenings of Thurs- 
day, Friday and Saturday." ^ 

This account of Peter Augustus Jay's wedding 
has been quoted in full not only because of 
its inherent interest but because it shows that 
the leaven of extreme simplicity which consti- 
tuted the contribution of the French Revolu- 
tion to American social life had begun its work. 
Franklin was in France from 1776 to 1785, but 
neither he nor John Adams appear to have 
sensed in the least the impending catastrophe. 
Jefferson succeeded Franklin, arriving March 
10, 1785, and before he came home in 1789 he 
could not help seeing that trouble was brewing. 
But he blinked the deep-seated nature of the 
popular unrest, believing that the extravagance 
of the Queen was the primary cause of dissen- 
sion. Thus he was able to sail for America 
firm in the conviction that " within a year one 
of the greatest of recorded revolutions would 
have been affected without bloodshed." ^ 

^ Colonial Days and Dames: Anne Hollingsworth Wharton, p. 210. 
^ Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution: 
Charles Downer Hazen, p. 53. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 103 

Strange that these men could not scent the 
breath of Revolution when its fiery blasts 
were almost in their faces! 

Sentimentally, however, Americans revelled 
in the protest when its actual significance had 
once been grasped. Some contemplated it 
with feelings of pleasure and pride as destined 
to spread abroad their own ideas, and many 
eagerly welcomed it as an ally in the propaga- 
tion of doctrines in which they believed but 
which had not yet won general acceptance. 
The songs, dances and cockades of the Revolu- 
tionists were eagerly adopted. Wansey, who 
traveled in this country in the summer of 1794, 
wrote that at least one in every ten persons he 
met in the streets wore the tricolored cockade, 
the men in their hats, the women on their 
breasts. Streets were rebaptized, to the end 
that Liberty might be always in the public 
eye, and marriage notices frequently recorded 
that " Citizen " X had been married to 
" Citess " Y, the ceremony having been per- 
formed by "Citizen" Z! The notices of the 
Jay wedding are happily without these affecta- 
tions, but the note of simplicity, attributable 
to recent excesses in this way, is none the less 
clearly discernible. 

A favorite recreation place in these days of 
old New York was the Battery, while Castle 
Garden, near by, was long a fashionable resort 



104 ROMANTIC DAYS 

for the best families. In the streets adjoining 
and fronting the Battery stood handsome old 
homes, of which Richard Grant White, writing 
from boyhood memories, says: "Long after 
the uptown movement began people who were 
already housed near the Battery, or who could 
afford to get houses there, lingered lovingly 
around it, and well they might do so, for a 
place of city residence more delightful or con- 
venient could not be found. Within five or 
ten minutes walk of Wall and South Streets, 
where the great merchants had their counting 
houses, it was yet entirely removed from busi- 
ness, and its surroundings made mere living 
there a pleasure. State Street, the eastern 
boundary of the Battery, was unsurpassed, 
if it was ever equalled, as a place of town resi- 
dence; for living there was living on a park with 
a grand water view. The prospects from the 
windows and balconies of the old State Street 
houses included the bay with its islands, and 
the shore of New Jersey. In summer the western 
breezes blew upon these windows straight from 
the water. The sight here on spring and summer 
and autumn evenings when splendid sunsets — 
common then but rare now because of changes 
in the surrounding country which have affected 
the formation and disposition of the clouds, — 
made the firmament and water blaze with 
gold and color, seemed sometimes in their gor- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 105 

geousness almost to surpass the imagination. 
It was a matter of course that such a place should 
be chosen as the site of the homes of wealthy- 
people. The houses were most of them very 
simple in their exterior; but they had an air 
of large and elegant domesticity which proved 
them the homes of people of taste and char- 
acter." 

Until the middle years of the last century 
Battery Park, or Battery Walk, remained as it 
had been during the colonial period, the most 
frequented promenade of the town. It is curious 
to think of the way in which this place once came 
near to seeing the end of the wily Talleyrand. 
Because Robespierre wished to bring the un- 
frocked priest to the guillotine he had fled from 
France to England, and then (in 1794) to this 
country. During his New York sojourn he had 
an extraordinary experience on the Battery, 
the story of which as afterwards recounted to 
his secretary, Bourdaleau, makes thrilling read- 
ing.^ A certain Beaumetz, with whom Talley- 
rand had fled from France and engaged in 
commercial speculation, was about to depart 
with him in a small vessel for India, there to 
improve their fortunes further. " Everything 
w-as in readiness for our departure; we were 
waiting for a fair wind with the most eager ex- 

^ It is here quoted, by permission of the J. B. Lippincott Company, 
from R. R. Wilson's New York: Old and New. 



106 ROMANTIC DAYS 

pectation, prepared to embark at any hour 
of the day or night in obedience to the warning 
from the captain. This state of uncertainty 
seemed to irritate the temper of Beaumetz, 
who one day entered our lodging, evidently 
laboring under great excitement, although com- 
manding himself to appear calm. I was en- 
gaged at the moment in writing letters to Eu- 
rope. Looking over my shoulder he said with 
forced gaiety, ' What need to waste time in 
penning letters? They will never reach their 
destination. Come with me and let us take a 
turn on the Battery; perhaps the wind may 
chop round; we may be nearer our departure 
than we imagine.' 

" The day was fine and I suffered myself to 
be persuaded. We walked through the crowded 
streets to the Battery, Beaumetz seizing my 
arm and hurrying me along. When we had 
arrived at the Esplanade he quickened his steps 
still more until we reached close to the water's 
edge. He talked loud and quickly, admiring 
in energetic terms the beauty of the scenery, 
the ships riding at anchor, and the busy scene 
on the peopled wharf. Suddenly he paused, 
for I had freed my arm from his grasp and stood 
immovable before him. Staying his wild and 
rapid steps I fixed my eyes upon him. He turned 
aside, cowed and dismayed. 'Beaumetz!' I 
cried, * you mean to murder me ! You intend 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 107 

to throw me into the sea. Deny it, monster, 
if you can ! ' 

" The maniac stared at me for a moment, but 
I took especial care not to avert my gaze from 
his countenance, and he quailed beneath it. 
He stammered a few incoherent words and 
strove to pass me, but I barred his passage with 
extended arms. He looked vacantly right and 
left and then flung himself upon my neck and 
burst into tears. ' 'Tis true, my friend, 'tis 
true,' he cried. ' The thought has haunted 
me day and night like a flash from the lurid 
fire of hell. It was for this I brought you. Look ! 
You stand within a foot of the edge of the 
parapet; in another instant the work would 
have been done.' The demon had left him; 
his eye was unsettled and the white foam stood 
in bubbles on his parched lips, but he was no 
longer tossed by the same mad excitement 
under which he had been labouring; he suffered 
me to lead him home without a word. A few 
days of bleeding, repose and abstinence restored 
him to his former self, and what is most extra- 
ordinary, the circumstance was never mentioned 
between us. My fate," Talleyrand concluded 
tersely, " was at work." 

Talleyrand's lodging was on the Blooming- 
dale Road, and there, also, Louis Philippe stayed 
while in New York at the end of the eighteenth 
century. It was Gouverneur Morris who gave 



108 ROMANTIC DAYS 

the Citizen King money with which to journey 
to America and who furnished him with un- 
limited credit during his two years of wandering 
in the United States. The bourgeois king's 
after-treatment of this loan showed how very 
little royal he was in matters of honor. " When 
he came into his own again," writes Morris's 
biographer, "he at first appeared to forget his 
debt entirely, and when his memory was jogged, 
he merely sent Morris the original sum without 
a word of thanks; whereupon, Morris, rather 
nettled, and as prompt to stand up for his rights 
against a man in prosperity as he had been to 
help him when in adversity, put the matter 
in the hands of his lawyer, through whom he 
notified Louis Philippe that if the affair was 
to be treated on a merely business basis it 
should then be treated in a strictly business 
way, and the interest for the twenty years that 
had gone by should be forwarded also. This 
was done, although not until after the death of 
Morris, the sum refunded being seventy thou- 
sand francs." 

Another royal (?) Frenchman associated with 
the Bloomingdale Road is Joseph Bonaparte, 
ex-king of Spain, who sought a refuge in America 
soon after the close of the second war with 
England and who, during his first weeks in New 
York, lived in the country-seat of the Post 
family, at what is now One Hundred and Twenty- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 109 

third Street. Before leaving the State of New 
York Bonaparte settled down on a large tract 
of land he had acquired in Jefferson County, 
installing (1822) as mistress of the villa he had 
there built Annette Savage, of whom he was 
wont to speak as " the beautiful Quaker girl." 
When he returned to Europe in 1830 his " Ameri- 
can wife " and the daughter who had been born 
to them remained in Northern New York, the 
girl eventually marrying a man named Benton. 
Forty years later Mrs. Benton was able, 
through friends, to urge her claim to recogni- 
tion as a Bonaparte and Napoleon III made an 
appointment to receive her at the Tuileries. 
No sooner did his eyes rest upon her than he 
exclaimed, "I recognize you as a Bonaparte." 
And forthwith the union of Joseph Bonaparte 
and Annette Savage was legitimized and Mrs. 
Benton received at court as the first cousin of 
the emperor! After Napoleon's downfall she 
returned to America and supported herself by 
teaching music. " She died in humble lodgings 
at Richfield Springs," records Rufus Rockwell 
Wilson," ^ and was laid to rest, on a stormy 
day of December, 1891, in the cemetery of the 
Presbyterian Church, at Oxbow, New York, 
only four persons standing beside the grave of 
this daughter of a king." 

Jerome Bonaparte, when in New York, was 

^ In New York, Old and New. 



110 ROMANTIC DAYS 

most often to be found at the elegant home of 
Stephen Jumel and his wife, a house perhaps 
more freighted with romance ^ than any other 
of New York so far mentioned. It was this 
house to which Roger Morris took as a bride 
Mary PhiHpse who, tradition has it, had pre- 
viously declined the hand of George Washing- 
ton. They lived here together until the Rev- 
olution, when Colonel Morris, who had once 
worn the king's uniform and so felt himself 
bound by honor to preserve a condition of 
neutrality, was compelled with other *' Tories " 
to depart for England. The Morris mansion 
was seized by the Continental troops, and here, 
curiously enough, Washington for a time had 
his headquarters. When peace was concluded 
Morris returned to New York but, finding that 
his own and his wife's property had been con- 
fiscated, sadly turned his steps again to England, 
where he is said to have died of a broken heart. 
The title of the house beside the Kingsbridge 
Road remained in dispute until 1810, when John 
Jacob Astor bought up the claim of the Morris 
heirs. A little later Astor sold the place to 
Stephen Jumel, a Frenchman by birth, who, 
while yet a young man, had emigrated to 
the island of San Domingo and there made a 

^ The Jumel Mansion, Fraunces' Tavern and old St. Paul's are 
the three buildings of a public or semi-public character, dating 
from pre-Revolutionary days, that still stand on the island of Man- 
hattan. 







OLD ST. PAUL S, NEW YORK. HERE WASHINGTON ATTENDED A SERVICE 
HELD IN HONOR OF HIS INAUGUR.^TION. HERE, TOO, HE REGULARLY 
WORSHIPPED WHILE NEW YORK WAS THE NATION'S CAPITAL. 




From a painting atti 



AARON BURR. 

ibuted to Gilbert Stuart in the possession of Princeton University. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 111 

fortune. The insurrection of the blacks under 
the leadership of the famous Toussaint I'Ouver- 
ture, put an end to this, however, and after 
a part of his fortune had been seized and 
destroyed Jumel disposed of the remainder 
and fled to America, reaching New York in 
1798. 

There he soon met and fell in love with the 
beautiful woman who was later to become the 
reluctant wife of Aaron Burr's old age. This 
woman's early history, which has only in recent 
years become fully known, accounts for much 
that is repugnant in her character. For a long 
time even her parentage was a mystery but 
it was then established that a sailor named 
Bowen was her father and a widow called Phoebe 
Kelly her mother. The history of Phoebe Kelly, 
as written in the town records of Providence, 
makes rather unsavory reading. It appears 
that she came to Providence from Taunton in 
1769. Three years later the people of the town 
razed an old building which had been the rendez- 
vous of whites and blacks of the lowest order, 
and Phoebe Bowen, who was in the house at 
the time, was brought before the Town Council. 
Again in 1785, another disorderly house, of 
which Phoebe was an inmate, was broken up 
and she was imprisoned. The Town Council 
ordered her two children, Polly and Betsey — 
the latter subsequently Madame Jumel — at that 



112 ROMANTIC DAYS 

time twelve and ten years old, respectively, to 
to be sent to the workhouse. 

The next known of Betsey Bowen is when she 
became an inmate of the house of Freelove 
Ballou, on Charles Street, Providence, in 1794. 
This Mrs. Ballou was a woman of unsavory 
reputation, and claimed to be a female doctor, 
midwife, and probably a procuress. It was 
asserted that while Betsey was an inmate of 
this house she gave birth to George Washington 
Bowen. After this she is again lost to view 
for a series of years, and it is not improbable 
that, with her loose habits and a cra\Tng for 
excitement and pleasure, she drifted into New 
York. There her face seems to have made her 
fortune, and with that cleverness born of her 
free and easy life and her disposition to enter 
into intrigue for her owti advancement she formed 
an alliance, about 1806, with Stephen Jumel, 
" who sailed a dozen ships and was king of the 
market until 1812." 

Jumel purchased the Morris mansion as a 
home for his bride. The old house was refitted 
with hangings, plate and furniture brought from 
France, the drawing-room being furnished with 
chairs and divans that had been the property 
of Marie Antoinette. Madame Jumel was not 
admitted to what was then considered the 
upper ten of New York society, but her New 
Year's feasts were counted among the mem- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 113 

orable social events of the period and her gener- 
ous hospitality was heartily welcomed by many. 
Though living a little out of town she was near 
enough to allow her each day to display upon 
the city's streets her gaudy and showy equi- 
page. She seems to have had a particular fond- 
ness for horses and in her drives always employed 
four to draw her carriage; while at Saratoga 
she surprised as well as amused many of the 
summer sojourners by being driven about in 
a huge carriage of bright yellow, drawn by 
four horses, with riders clad in amazing liveries. 
In 1815 the true character of the woman, 
which displayed qualities of treachery and in- 
gratitude, was illustrated by a clever and suc- 
cessful ruse by which she gained possession of 
nearly the entire estate of her husband. M. 
Jumel, who proposed to go to France for the 
purpose of prosecuting claims for the spoli- 
ation of his property at San Domingo, before 
doing so conveyed to trustees the greater part 
of his property, to be held for Madame Jumel 
during her lifetime, and at her death to be 
transferred to him or to his heirs. 

Madame Jumel accompanied her husband 
to France, and w^hile there he decided to dispose 
of his property in the United States and to 
settle in his native country. Madame Jumel 
made a pretence of agreement to this new move, 
and offered to become the agent of her husband 



114 ROMANTIC DAYS 

for the sale of his property in America. She 
was given a power of attorney by her husband 
in 1826 which authorized her to sell for his 
benefit all his real estate in the State of New 
York. With this important and all-powerful 
document Madame Jumel returned to this 
country and immediately took entire control 
of the estates of her husband. She leased prop- 
erty, collected rents, and in fact transacted 
the entire business necessary in such matters; 
recognizing the advantage she now had and 
seeing the opportunity now presented of possess- 
ing herself of her husband's large fortune, she 
carried the scheme to ultimate success. In her 
letters to her husband she urged him not to sell 
the property, as had at first been determined 
upon, advancing as the reason for her change 
of opinion that the property had already 
largely increased in value and was becoming 
more valuable day by day. On the other 
hand, while deceiving her husband by these 
letters, she was for a period of two years 
carrying out her preconceived scheme for the 
capture of the fortune, and had conveyed at 
different times during that period, by the au- 
thority given her in the power of attorney, 
all the property owned by her husband, 
with the exception of some sixty-five acres 
of unimproved land at High Bridge. These 
conveyances were made to an alleged niece of 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 115 

Madame Jumel, who had been adopted by 
her, and the property was reconveyed to Madame 
Jumel by the niece. It seems that M. Jumel 
was never informed of the transfers made by his 
wife, and up to the day of his death, in May, 
1832, remained in ignorance of the fact that she 
and not he was the then-owner of his immense 
estate, valued at $3,000,000. 

To aid Madame Jumel in the legal diflSculties 
which inevitably ensued after her husband's 
death the services of Aaron Burr, then seventy- 
eight years old, but still active and retaining 
much of his old-time fascination, were retained. 
Soon he was dining with the charming widow, 
then just in her prime, and ere many months 
had passed was ardently pressing his suit for 
her hand. When he proposed marriage she 
promptly refused him but he, not a whit dis- 
concerted, retorted that he would come out 
again on a certain day, bringing a clergyman 
with him — ■ and he proved to be as good as his 
word. On a sunny afternoon of July, 1833, 
he came riding up to the great portico of her 
house, accompanied by the same minister who, 
half a century before, had married him to 
the mother of his beloved Theodosia; and he 
insisted that Madame Jumel should then and 
there become his wife. Alarmed and dismayed, 
but fearing a scandal she reluctantly consented 
and they were married in the big drawing-room. 



116 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Parton, than whom we could have no better 
authority, says that Burr, having now put at 
rest his lurking fear lest old age should find him 
poor and homeless, forgot to humor wisely the 
good fortune that had come to him and rapidly 
squandered his wife's wealth. Naturally there 
were bitter quarrels, followed by tardy recon- 
ciliations. In 1834 came a permanent separa- 
tion which Madame Jumel effectively clinched 
by employing as counsel the son and namesake 
of the man whom Burr had killed in a duel ! She 
lived until 1865. Her former home, with the 
plot upon which it stands, became in 1901 the 
property of the city of New York. 

Only a mile away (at the corner of Tenth 
Avenue and One Hundred and Forty-second 
Street) there long stood, also, the house ^ from 
which Alexander Hamilton rode forth early 
on the morning of July 11, 1804, to meet his 
untimely death. 

The real cause of Burr's bitter hatred of 
Hamilton was the latter's political activity 
against him. The occasion of their meeting 
was the press publication of some derogatory 
remarks made by Hamilton about Burr in 
private letters. Burr had now ready to hand 
a long-sought excuse for a private quarrel and, 
the duel being then a recognized means of 

^Thia was Hamilton's "country-seat"; his city residence was 
at the comer of Wall and Broad Streets. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 117 

settling such diflSculties, Hamilton could not 
refuse the challenge. The results of their 
historic encounter on the heights of Wee- 
hawken were for Hamilton death; and for Burr 
an enforced banishment which lasted for many 
years. Later the murderer ^ partially rehabili- 
tated himself, as has been already shown; 
and in his more serious moments he never failed 
to render due respect to the qualities of the 
man he had killed. 

That Burr was very poor and very lonely 
during the last years of his life was perhaps 
his punishment for the sins of his young man- 
hood. Parke Godwin, son-in-law of William 
Cullen Bryant, has left us a picture of Hamilton's 
slayer weeping at the grave of his ancestors, 
which certainly makes us far more inclined to 
pity than to belabor Aaron Burr. 

" It was during my student days at Prince- 
ton," Godwin says, " where I graduated in 1834. 
One afternoon, in the late autumn, I went with 

^ That Burr was regarded as a murderer and a sensualist by rep- 
resentative " good citizens " of the day becomes very clear as one 
reads the contemporary writings. Dr. John W. Francis, M. D., 
LL. D. says, (in Old New York, p. 18) " On the very afternoon of 
that fatal day, while the whole city was in consternation and on the 
look-out, Burr had already reached his domicile on Richmond Hill 
and was luxuriating in his wonted bath, with Rousseau's Confessions 
in his hands for his mental sustenance." In Philip Hone's Diary 
under date of July 3, 1833, we read, " The celebrated Col. Burr was 
married on Monday evening, to the equally celebrated Mrs. Jumel. 
It is benevolent of her to keep the old man in his latter days. One 
good turn deserves another! " 



118 ROMANTIC DAYS 

a fellow-student for a stroll, and finally, at his 
suggestion, we turned into the town cemetery 
and walked among the graves of the distin- 
guished men buried there. 

" We were approaching that part of the cem- 
etery in which the presidents of Princeton were 
buried when I noticed an old man standing 
there perfectly still, with his hat off, his head 
bent, and apparently in deep meditation. Some- 
thing about the man's figure and, perhaps, 
his clothes — for he wore the conventional 
garments of an earlier time — led me suddenly 
to suspect that it was Aaron Burr, up to whom 
my father had led me, a bashful schoolboy, so 
many years before. I motioned to my compan- 
ion to stop, and I moved a little to one side, 
so that I might see the man's face in profile 
at least, and when I did that I knew for a cer- 
tainty that it was Aaron Burr. 

" His face was very grave, and its feeble 
owner, as he stood bowed over the graves of 
his father and Jonathan Edwards, his grand- 
father, who were both presidents of Princeton, 
was oblivious apparently to everything that 
was going on about him. Silently my companion 
and I watched him, and I am sure that as we 
strained our eyes, with a feeling of awe, towards 
him, we beheld the tears course down his withered 
cheeks and fall upon the mounds before him. 
And I at least suddenly found myself thinking 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 119 

that this would be his last visit to the grave, and 
that Burr himself realized it. I believe that 
this turned out to be the case. 

" For perhaps ten minutes he stood there just 
as we had first seen him. At last he turned 
slowly — it seemed reluctantly — away, and 
with his head still bent, his hands clasped be- 
hind him, and his few straggling gray locks 
all but sweeping his coat collar, he walked with 
trembling steps out of the cemetery, not having 
seen us, or, if he had, making no sign to that 
effect. 

" Two years or so later Aaron Burr himself 
was at rest at last beside his father in that old 
burying ground." 

Hamilton's grave is in the cemetery adjoin- 
ing Trinity Church; and there rest also Albert 
Gallatin, the greatest financier, — after Ham- 
ilton, — which this country has produced, 
William Bradford, the first New York printer 
and newspaper publisher, Robert Fulton, and 
many other worthies whose names would be 
immediately recognized if here rehearsed. Yet 
I have never heard that flowers are often fur- 
tively scattered on the graves of any of these 
great men; and such is true of the grave of 
Charlotte Temple, which may also be found in 
this historic spot. An old New Yorker, writing 
to the Evening Post (September 12, 1903), de- 
clared, " When I was a boy the story of Char- 



120 ROMANTIC DAYS 

lotte Temple was familiar in the household of 
every New Yorker. The first tears I ever saw 
in the eyes of a grown person were shed for her. 
In that churchyard are graves of heroes, phi- 
losophers and martyrs, whose names are familiar 
to the youngest scholar and whose memory is 
dear to the wisest and best. Their graves, 
though marked by imposing monuments, win 
but a glance of curiosity, while the turf over 
Charlotte Temple is kept fresh by falling tears." 
Read Mrs. Rowson's story ^ if you would 
understand why this is true. For in spite of 
its old-fashioned tone, its halting grammar and 
its somewhat obtrusive moralizing, this romance 
is as freshly moving today as when its first 
American edition appeared in 1794. In a previous 
book of mine I have given an extended sketch 
of Mrs. Rowson's life so I will here confine myself 
to New York's connection with the novel which 
made her famous. She always maintained that 
the story of Charlotte Temple was a true story, 
and it is pretty well established now that the 
Montraville of the romance was her own cousin, 
Colonel John Montresor, who, when lieutenant 
in the British army, induced the original of 
the ** Charlotte " in the story " to Leave her 
home (in 1774) and embark with him and his 

^ A new edition with carefully-restored text and valuable notes 
has recently been published by Funk and Wagnalls. 
^ Old Boston Days and Ways, p. 433. 




THE WEST FRONT OF TRINITY CHURCH SHOWING GRAVE - YARD. 
From nn uld print. 




THOMAS PAINE IN 1792. 
Page 152. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 121 

regiment for New York, where he most cruelly 
abandoned her." Mrs. Rowson herself said, 
in the Preface to Charlotte Temple, printed two 
years after the death of the officer in question : 
" The circumstances on which I have founded 
this novel were related to me some little time 
since by an old lady who had personally known 
Charlotte," This " old lady " was probably 
the Mrs. Beauchamp of the story, whose hus- 
band was an officer in the English army and 
served in America. Mrs. Rowson heard the 
story from Mrs. Beauchamp after the Revolu- 
tion, when the army had returned and they first 
met in England. It was in England that the 
book was written, and there in 1790 it was first 
published. " I have thrown over the whole," 
continues the Preface, " a slight veil of fiction 
and substituted names and places according 
to my own fancy. The principal characters 
are now consigned to the silent tomb: it can 
therefore hurt the feelings of no one." 

Charlotte's " tomb " is in the northern 
part of Trinity Churchyard, between the eastern 
pathway and the iron fence that faces Broadway, 
and is marked by a long brownstone slab, well 
sunk into the surrounding soil and bearing with- 
out date or other inscription the name " Char- 
lotte Temple." In the absence of authenticated 
records local historians, of course, object from 
time to time that there is absolutely nothing 



122 ROMANTIC DAYS 

to prove that this is the grave of the heroine 
of Mrs. Rowson's story. But in the family of 
Mrs. Rowson there has come down from the 
writer herself a fixed belief that the stone is 
authentic; and Mrs. Rowson survived Char- 
lotte's death forty-nine years, time enough, 
surely, in which to establish an effective denial. 
Not that this is the original stone or that it still 
marks the resting-place of Charlotte's ashes, 
save in a poetic sense! After the visit, in 1800, 
of Charlotte's daughter to her mother's grave, 
the first simple uninscribed headstone was re- 
placed by the one which still survives; and some- 
what later Charlotte's remains were removed 
to England. The betrayed girl's real name is 
believed to have been Charlotte Stanley and 
it is further understood that she was the daugh- 
ter of an English clergyman and the grand- 
daughter of an English earl. The house to 
which Charlotte was taken by her betrayer, 
described in the story as a " small house a few 
miles from New York," has been identified 
by Henry B. Dawson ^ as situated at what is 
now the corner of Pell Street and the Bowery. 
Which means that the house was then really 
in the country. For the word bouwerij is 
Dutch for farm or country-seat, and Bowery 

^ Introduction to " New York City During the American Revolu- 
tion; being a Collection of Original Papers Belonging to the Mercantile 
Library Association," published in 1861, 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 123 

Lane, so called because it ran through the country 
estate of Peter Stuyvesant, was then largely 
given over to the houses of well-to-do citizens. 
(It will be recalled that it was while Mrs. Beau- 
champ was " walking in the garden, leaning 
on her husband's arm," that she heard " poor 
Charlotte " playing the harp and singing a 
heartbreaking song in her garden, which ad- 
joined.) 

Very many interesting reminiscences hover 
about this end of the Bowery. From the Bull's 
Head Tavern at number 17 the Boston stage 
was wont to take its noisy departure, and one 
of Washington Irving's biographers credits to 
the comings and goings that the impressionable 
boy here witnessed the famous writer's " ram- 
bling propensity." For half a century the 
Bull's Head remained the most popular meet- 
ing-place of the butchers of the town ^ and the 
drovers of the countryside. Then it was torn 
down and in 1826 a theatre — the New^ York, 
soon to be called the American and not long 

1 According to the Autobiography of N. T. Huhhard the population 
of New York in 1798 was about 70,000. At this time there were 
no buildings in Broadway above Chambers Street — except scatter- 
ing ones — and " there were not sixty houses, in all, in Brooklyn 
from the Navy Yard to the South Ferry. We then crossed to Brook- 
lyn in small boats. The fare was M. Some years after a horse-boafc 
conveyed passengers across the river." For a condensed but illumi- 
nating statement of the astonishing rapidity with which the city 
grew, between this time and 1825, see McMaster's History of the 
People of the United States, Vol. V, p. 122 et seq. 



124 ROMANTIC DAYS 

thereafter to become the Bowery — was erected 
on its site. 

Four times in the course of the years this 
Bowery playhouse was burned down and re- 
built. For fifty years almost every English- 
speaking actor of note trod its stage. The 
house opened with a company which included 
Ann Duff and George Barrett; Charlotte Cush- 
man made here her first New York appearance 
as Lady Macbeth in 1836; George Jones, known 
in old age as the eccentric Count Johannes 
but then a young and handsome actor, here won 
success; and on this stage, also, Priscilla Cooper, 
who was later to be lady of the White House 
during the presidency of her husband's father, 
John Tyler, delighted for a period that curious 
product of the early nineteenth century, the 
Bowery Boy, 

Bowery Boys were youths who worked for 
their living on week days but in the evenings 
and on holidays aimed only to be dandies and 
firemen. Dayton thus describes a typical rep- 
resentative of this peculiarly New York prod- 
uct which went out with the Civil War: " His 
hair was one of his chief cares and from appear- 
ance the engrossing object of his solicitude. It 
was cropped at the back of the head as closely 
as scissors could cut, while the long front locks 
were stiffened with bear's grease and then 
rolled and pushed until they shone like glass 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 125 

bottles. His face was closely shaven as beards 
in any shape were considered effeminate and so 
forbidden by his creed. A black straight broad- 
brimmed hat, polished as highly as the hot iron 
could effect, was worn with a pitch forward 
and a slight inclination to one side intended 
to impart a rakish air. A large shirt collar 
turned down and loosely fashioned so as to 
expose the full proportions of the brawny neck; 
a black frock coat with skirts extending below 
the knee; a flashy satin or velvet vest cut so 
low as to expose the entire bosom of a shirt 
often embroidered; trousers tight to the knee 
and thence gradually swelling in size to the 
bottom so as nearly to conceal feet encased in 
high polished boots " — these were his habil- 
iments. Jewelry that flashed, perfume that 
cried out for recognition and a voice pitched 
like a fire trumpet, completed the picture of 
the Bowery Boy. He walked with arms akimbo 
when on parade, and if anybody jostled him 
he was insulted; and when he was insulted, 
he fought. Rough, rather than tough, another 
of his admiring biographers records that, desir- 
ous of punching somebody at all times, he es- 
pecially liked to punch persons who were rude 
or cruel to the female sex, and that he scorned 
to use any weapons save those that nature gave 
him. So, with his fists and the vigorous use 
of a language all his own, this curious creature 



126 ROMANTIC DAYS 

compelled the awe, if not the respect, of the New 
York of his time. 

The first New York theatre of which we have 
definite information was situated on the east side 
of Nassau Street, previously known as Kip 
Street, in the vicinity of the Dutch Church. 
The auditorium here accommodated barely three 
hundred persons, and Murray and Kean were the 
managers. Their company was disbanded on 
July 8, 1751 and, six months thereafter, the 
" Nassau Street Theatre " was reopened by 
Robert Upton. The Hallams, who should be 
considered the real fathers of the American 
stage, and of whom we have heard in the Phil- 
adelphia chapter, are, however, the actors best 
known in connection with this house. Their 
plays were well put on and drew large and ap- 
preciative audiences. The next theatre in New 
York was situated on Cruger's wharf and opened 
on December 28, 1758, with Rowe's " Jane 
Shore "; in a couple of months it was announ- 
cing its last performance. 

A somewhat longer and much more exciting 
career was enjoyed by the Chapel Street Theatre, 
situated near Nassau Street, on the south side 
of Beekman Street, then styled Chapel Street. 
Through " cards " preserved to us in the col- 
umns of Gaine's Mercury we have convincing 
proof that the audience at this house sometimes 
thoroughly enjoyed itself. The first reads: 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 127 

" Complaints having been several times made 
that a number of gentlemen crowd the stage and 
very much interrupt the performance, and as it is 
impossible that the actors, when thus obstructed, 
should do that justice to their parts they otherwise 
would, it will be taken as a particular favour if no 
gentleman is offended that he is absolutely re- 
fused admission at the stage door, unless he has 
previously secured himself a place in either the 
stage or upper boxes." The other card states: 
" Theatre in New York, May 3, 1762. A pistole 
reward will be given to whoever can discover 
the person who was so very rude as to throw 
Eggs from the Gallery upon the stage last 
Monday, by which the Cloaths of some ladies 
and gentlemen were spoiled, and the performance 
in some measure interrupted. D. Douglass." 
The Chapel Street Theatre was superseded 
by the John Street Theatre, situated near 
Broadway. Performances here began at six 
o'clock, ladies sending their servants at four 
to keep seats for them. One member of a com- 
pany which acted here before the Revolution 
was a granddaughter of Colley Cibber. During 
the occupation of New York by the British 
amateur performances were several times given 
here for charity, the actors being the brilliant 
young officers of the invading army. After 
the Revolution there was the same endeavor 
to suppress the drama in New York that we have 



128 ROMANTIC DAYS 

seen in other cities. But nothing was accom- 
pHshed, Washington and Adams sturdily attend- 
ing performances at the John Street house 
whenever opportunity offered. The last per- 
formance which took place here occurred in 
January, 1798. 

None of the houses thus far named equals 
in interest, however, the Park Theatre, whose 
history is second to that of no other playhouse 
in America. It stood on Park Row, facing what 
was then the lower part of City Hall Park, with 
a frontage of eighty feet and a depth of one hun- 
dred and sixty-five feet. Theatre Alley at the 
back of this site gets its name logically. Two 
thousand persons could easily be seated within 
the auditorium of this house. And though it 
boasted no architectural magnificence, it had 
cost its managers, Hodgkinson and Dunlap, no 
less than $130,000 when it opened, in a some- 
what unfinished condition, on January 29, 1798. 
Hodgkinson almost immediately retired from 
the management leaving the control to William 
Dunlap, first historian of the American theatre. 
But Dunlap was soon forced into bankruptcy, 
and several other managers, also, found them- 
selves at this time unable to make money here. 

After the first building had burned down and 
another had replaced it (in 1821) brighter days 
dawned. Edmund Simpson then came to be 
manager for more than a quarter of a century, 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 129 

and during this time most of the great actors 
of the day were here presented. Cooke, Kean, 
Kemble, Booth and Wallack are onl.y a few of 
the illustrious names associated with the history 
of this house. Cooke's first appearance in 
America occurred here on November 21, 1810, 
and Dr. Francis, who greatly admired his work, 
tells us in his Old New York that he " eclipsed 
all predecessors." A little over two years later 
the great actor died in New York and was 
buried in St. Paul's Churchyard. There is 
extant a painting containing a portrait of Kean 
and Dr. Francis at his tomb. Through the 
trees of the picture may be descried the outlines 
of the second Park Theatre. It was at the Park 
Theatre in 1822 that Junius Brutus Booth first 
appeared as Richard III. Francis records that 
" although this actor lacked judgment he pos- 
sessed genius." Also in 1822 appeared here 
Charles Mathews, Sr., frightened nearly out of 
his wits, as Dr. Francis humorously admits, 
at discovering that New York was undergoing 
one of its periodic attacks of yellow fever just 
as he arrived. 

At the Park in 1826, Macready, Edwin 
Forrest and James H. Hackett each made a 
New York debut, and there on Wednesday 
evening, September 1, 1830, Charles Kean re- 
ceived the plaudits of the discriminating. Here 
also it was that Charles Kemble and his daugh- 



130 ROMANTIC DAYS 

ter, Frances Anne Kemble, scored their initial 
American success, the former in the title role 
of " Hamlet " and the latter as Bianca in 
" Fazio." 

Nor were the triumphs of the Park confined to 
the drama, for the first Italian opera ever heard 
in the Western world, Rossini's " The Barber 
of Seville," was produced on its stage in Novem- 
ber, 1825, with Manuel Garcia, the incomparable 
tenor, as Almaviva, and his daughter, Maria 
Garcia, as Rosina. The " Signorina," as Maria 
was called by the critics of the day, made an im- 
mediate and a prolonged success by reason of 
her beautiful face, charming manners and golden 
voice. Twice a week for nearly a year fashion- 
able New York flocked to hear her sing. Then 
the father set off for Mexico and the daughter 
married Eugene Malibran, a French merchant 
resident in New York, who was supposed to be 
wealthy but soon turned out to be a bankrupt. 
He was imprisoned for debt and his young wife, 
thrown on her own resources, secured a position 
in the choir of Grace Church, then in Broadway 
below Rector Street, and played several engage- 
ments in the theatre afterwards known as the 
Bowery. Then she left for Paris, where her 
career was one succession of triumphs until 
her untimely death at the age of twenty-nine. 

Inasmuch as for half a century the Park 
Theatre was the background of all that is most 




JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 
From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 131 

interesting in New York's dramatic history it 
is pleasant to know something of how the house 
looked. Its walls were of brick; its stuccoed 
front and wooden steps were painted gray and 
lined with black to imitate blocks of granite; 
and in a niche of the front wall stood a bust of 
Shakespeare. The pit was furnished with wooden 
benches and the first tier divided into a series 
of lock-boxes. Men about town, bachelors 
and clerks occupied the pit, families and women 
the tier of boxes. A separate stairway led to 
the gallery and to the third tier, which came 
to be a meeting-place for the dissolute of both 
sexes; the gallery was given up to apprentice- 
boys, servants, sailors and negroes, the last 
named occupying a place apart. Drinking-bars, 
in connection with apple, pie and peanut stands 
were adjacent to the pit, gallery and third tier. 
Peanuts were munched in the pit; apples and 
oranges, during recess in the boxes. Mrs. 
Trollope ^ records that it was not uncommon 
to see male occupants of the first tier in shirt 
sleeves, but this could scarcely have been true 
on the occasions when distinguished players 

* Unexpected confirmation of this lady's strictures of us — be- 
cause of our bad manners — may be found in newspaper advertise- 
ments early in the century. The New York Evening Post of March 
2, 1802, acquaints those who would become patrons of the Juvenile 
Assembly, held at the Old Assembly Rooms, 68 Williams street, 
that gentlemen, when they appear in a ball room wear full dress 
and never " lounge into the room in boots." 



132 ROMANTIC DAYS 

from abroad graced the boards. A picture of 
the interior of the Park, on the November 
evening of 1822 when it reopened — after the 
fire — to make Charles Mathews welcome, dis- 
plays a truly brilliant scene with " all society " 
on hand.^ The proprietors at this time were 
John K. Beekman and John Jacob Astor, the 
former familiarly called " Theatre Jack " by 
reason of his love of theatricals, and the latter 
known as the interested patron of whatever con- 
tributed to the higher life of New York. 

John Jacob Astor was in many ways a most 
interesting and a highly romantic character. 
Born in 1763, in the village of Waldorf, in 
Baden, the son of a butcher, he eventually 
came to be one of the most distinguished figures 
of New York and that, too, I need scarcely add, 
for other reasons than his financial acumen and 
his great wealth. An older brother, Henry, 
had preceded him to New York and had there 
established himself in his father's useful if 
humble trade. John Jacob desired to follow 
him and so left Waldorf at the age of sixteen, 
set out on foot for the Rhine, worked his passage 
down the river on a freighter and arrived in 
due time at London where his eldest brother 
had some time since established a thriving 

^ This is a water-color drawing made by John Searle for William 
Bayard, Esq., and showing Mathews on the stage as well as many 
carefully identified social celebrities in the audience. The original 
may be seen at the rooms of the New York Historical Society. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 133 

piano factory. Here the youth stayed for three 
years dihgently acquiring Enghsh and carefully 
'* saving up " for the time when he might reahze 
his cherished dream of going to America. No 
sooner was the independence of the United 
States declared than Astor, by this time a sturdy 
lad of twenty, invested one third of his hard- 
earned savings in a ticket for Baltimore. Inas- 
much as he had to cross the Atlantic in mid- 
winter he was subjected to a long and wearisome 
voyage but, characteristically, he turned this 
to good advantage by cultivating the acquaint- 
ance of a German fellow-passenger, who had 
built up a profitable business in furs and skins 
and who confided to his absorbed young friend 
the secrets of his success — how with a few 
trinkets skins could be bought from the Indians 
and sold with great profit to the furriers of New 
York, but more especially how ^^ery profitable 
it was to buy furs in America and sell them in 
London. 

Astor landed in Baltimore in March, 1784, 
and proceeded promptly to New York, where 
his brother, Henry, who was very glad to see him 
secured for him a position as clerk in a Gold 
Street fur store with a wage of two dollars a 
week and an opportunity to acquire an expert 
knowledge of furs. The following summer 
young Astor made his first trip to the fur country 
and bought a cargo of pelts. He also learned 



134 ROMANTIC DAYS 

a number of Indian dialects and so was in a 
position to buy advantageously. Thus by 
1786 he had sufficient faith in himself to com- 
mand a few hundred dollars of borrowed capital 
and so set up a little shop in Water Street. Here, 
not being able at the outset to afford a clerk, 
he did everything for himself. In the buying 
season he went, pack on back, far into the In- 
dian country; the rest of the year he personally 
prepared the skins for market. From the very 
first he prospered, not the least lucky of his 
ventures being the matrimonial one through 
which he acquired a wife with a small dowry 
and a genius for business that rivalled his own. 
The opening of the new century found him the 
employer of an army of buyers, trappers and 
Indians. Soon, too, he was able to take ad- 
vantage of his shipmate's hint that London 
afforded a better market than did New York 
for furs, and he chartered a vessel which went 
over there laden with furs and returned bearing 
musical instruments. Ere long he was sending 
vessels around the world, carrying furs to Eng- 
land, France and Germany and European manu- 
factures to the Orient; from China he would 
bring back tea to New York. 

" He seemed," writes Rufus Rockwell Wilson, 
" to possess an almost intuitive knowledge of 
the various markets in which he traded, and 
despite the immense proportions his business 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 135 

had now assumed, he personally superintended 
every part of it, exercising a minute inspection 
even to the smallest details." Astor's oflSce 
at this time was in Vesey Street and his ware- 
houses in Greenwich between Liberty and Cort- 
landt Streets. Of his " great national venture," 
which was not so utterly a success as his earlier 
enterprises had been, there is not space here 
to write in any detail. Suffice it to say that, 
instead of making him, at middle life, the richest 
man in the world he was only the richest man 
in America. Great faith in the development of 
Manhattan Island led him to invest large sums 
in real estate there, following what seemed to 
him the probable direction of the city's growth 
and thus, when he died at the age of eighty- 
five, he left behind him a fortune of thirty 
millions. 

Much more interesting than Astor's wealth, 
however, is the way the man himself grew with 
his opportunities. He was always eager to 
improve his mind and enrich his life and so was 
the fondly cherished friend of many artists and 
men of letters. Washington Irving was devoted 
to him, and was glad, when his personal sorrows 
pressed hardest upon him, to take refuge from 
the world in Astor's beautiful summer place 
near what is now Eighty-Eighth Street. " I 
cannot tell you," the literary man once wrote 
a friend from this spot, " how sweet and delight- 



136 ROMANTIC DAYS 

ful I have found this retreat; with its lawn 
in front and garden in the rear. The lawn 
sweeps down to the water-edge and full in front 
of the house is the little strait of Hell Gate, 
which forms a constantly moving picture. . . . 
I have written more since I have been here 
than I have ever done in the same space of 
time." 

Washington Irving, of course, peculiarly be- 
longs to New York both by reason of his in- 
timate personal connection with the city and 
because of his delightful Knickerbocker s His- 
tory. This work (published in 1807) by its 
broad humor won for its author a reputation 
which decided for all time that he was cut out 
for a literary man rather than for a lawyer. 
Irving was only twenty-four when the book 
appeared; and he was only twenty-six when he 
encountered that experience which, for many 
years, saddened his life and gave a tinge of 
melancholy to his writings. For then it was 
that Matilda Hoffman, the exquisite maiden 
whom he had hoped to make his wife, died in the 
eighteenth year of her age. Irving never alluded 
to this part of his history, but after his death, 
in a repository of which he always kept the 
key, was found a package marked on the outside 
" Private Mems." Herein was discovered a 
fragment in his own handwriting telling the 
reason for his celibacy. Here also was a mini a- 



IN THE EARLY R:ePUBLIC 137 

ture of great beauty enclosed in a case, and a 
slip of paper, on which was written, *' Matilda 
Hoffman." His nephew, many years later, 
reprinted some of the memoranda thus avail- 
able.^ 

" We saw each other every day," the con- 
fession runs, " and I became excessively at- 
tached to her. . . . The passion was terribly 
against my studies. I felt my own deficiency and 
despaired of ever succeeding at the bar. I 
could study anything else rather than law and 
had a fatal propensity to belles-lettres. I had 
gone on blindly like a boy in love; but now 
I began to open my eyes and be miserable. I 
had nothing in purse nor in expectation. I 
anticipated nothing from my legal pursuits, 
and had done nothing to make me hope for 
public employment or political elevation. I 
had begun a satirical and humourous work (The 
History of New York) in company with one 
of my brothers; but he had gone to Europe 
shortly after commencing it, and my feelings 
had run into so different a vein, that I could not 
go on with it. I became low-spirited and dis- 
heartened and didn't know what was to be- 
come of me. 

" In the midst of this struggle and anxiety 
Matilda was taken ill with a cold. Nothing 
was thought of it at first; but she grew rapidly 

^ Life and Letters of Washington Irving: New York, 1867. 



138 ROMANTIC DAYS 

worse and fell into a consumption. I cannot 
tell you what I suffered. The ills I have under- 
gone in this life have been dealt out to me drop 
by drop, and I have tasted all their bitterness. 
I saw her fade rapidly away ; beautiful and more 
beautiful and more angelical to the very last. . . . 
I was by her when she died; I was the last one 
she looked upon. . . . For a long time I seemed 
to care for nothing; the world was a blank to 
me. I abandoned all thoughts of the law. I 
went into the country; but could not bear 
solitude yet could not enjoy society. There 
was a dismal horror continually in my mind that 
made me fear to be alone. I had often to get 
up in the night and seek the bedroom of my 
brother, as if the having a human being by 
me would relieve me of my own thoughts. 

" Months elapsed before my mind would 
resume any tone; but the despondency I had 
suffered for a long time in the course of this 
attachment, and the anguish that attended its 
catastrophe, seemed to give a turn to my whole 
character, and throw some clouds into my dis- 
position, which have ever since hung about 
it. ... I was naturally susceptible and tried 
to form other attachments, but my heart would 
not hold on; and it would continually recur 
to what it had lost; and whenever there was a 
pause in the hurry of novelty or excitement, I 
would sink into dismal dejection. For years 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 139 

I could not talk on the subject of this hopeless 
regret; I could not even mention her name; 
but her image was continually before me, and 
I dreamt of her incessantly." 

As evidence of the romantic tenderness with 
which Irving cherished the memory of this 
early love it may be cited that all through life 
he kept by him Matilda's Bible and Prayer- 
book. Yet even those closest to him never 
ventured to mention her name, one instance 
only having come down to us of an exception 
to this. Then it was Matilda's father who made 
the reference and that in his own house thirty 
years after the lovely girl's death! A grand- 
daughter had been requested to play for Mr. 
Hoffman some favorite piece upon the piano 
and in extracting her music from the drawer 
had accidentally brought forth a piece of em- 
broidery with it. " Washington," said the older 
man, picking up the faded relic, " this is a 
piece of poor Matilda's workmanship." In- 
stantly Irving, who had been conversing gaily 
a moment before, sunk into utter silence 
and in a few moments got up and left the 
house. 

One of the most delightful bits of New York 
description which Irving has left us is his ac- 
count of a voyage up the Hudson before the 
day of steamboats. '* In the good old times," 
he says, " before steamboats and railroads had 



140 ROMANTIC DAYS 

annihilated time and space and driven all poetry 
and romance out of travel, a voyage to Albany 
was equal to a voyage to Europe at present and 
took almost as much time. We enjoyed the 
beauties of the river in those days; the features 
of note were not all jumbled together, nor the 
towns or villages huddled one into the other by 
railroad speed as they are now. 

" I was to make the voyage under the pro- 
tection of a relative of mature age; one experi- 
enced in the river. His first care was to look 
out for a favourite sloop, and captain, in which 
there was great choice. The constant voyaging 
in the river-craft by the best families of New 
York and Albany made the merits of captains 
and sloops matters of notoriety and discussion 
in both cities. Captains were mediums of 
communication between separated friends and 
families. On the arrival of one of them at either 
place, he had messages to deliver and communica- 
tions to execute which took him from house 
to house. ... In this way the captains of 
Albany sloops were personages of more note 
in the community than captains of European 
packets or steamships at the present day. . . . 

'* At length the sloop actually got under way. 
As she worked out of the dock into the stream 
there was a great exchange of last words be- 
tween friends on board and friends on shore and 
much waving of handkerchiefs when the sloop 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 141 

was out of hearing. Our captain was a worthy 
man, native of Albany, one of the old Dutch 
stock. His crew was composed of blacks reared 
in the family, and belonging to him; for negro 
slavery still existed in the state. All his com- 
munications with them were in Dutch. They 
were obedient to his orders; though they oc- 
casionally had much previous discussion on the 
wisdom of them and were sometimes positive 
in maintaining an opposite opinion. This was 
especially the case with an old gray-headed 
negro who had sailed with the captain's father 
when the captain was a mere boy and who 
was very crabbed and conceited on points of 
seamanship. I observed that the captain gen- 
erally let him have his own way." 

The day of steam was, however, at hand and 
the very year which gave Diedrich Knicker- 
bocker to literature gave Fulton's first passen- 
ger boat, the Clermont to navigation. Fulton 
was the son of a Scotch innkeeper settled in 
Pennsylvania, and had begun life as an artist, 
studying for several years with Benjamin West 
in London. But the application of the steam- 
engine to ship propulsion had early begun to 
interest him and when chance threw into his 
way, at Paris, Robert R. Livingston, then Ameri- 
can minister to the French court, who was also 
an enthusiast on this subject, he began to focus 
his experiments upon the production of a boat 



142 ROMANTIC DAYS 

the average speed of which should be not less 
than four miles an hour. Livingston had se- 
cured the exclusive right for a term of years 
to steam navigation in all waters within the 
limits of New York State provided he could 
produce a boat meeting this particular condition, 
and Fulton, therefore, set himself diligently 
to work to turn out such a boat. The Cler- 
mont, in its very first journey to Albany, 
averaged five miles an hour! At just about 
the same time, it is interesting to note. Colonel 
John Stevens of Hoboken, who for a dozen 
years had been experimenting along this same 
line, perfected his Phoenix, through which 
he won the mastery of the adjacent waters of 
the ocean. It was a dozen years more, however, 
before any steamboat actually crossed the At- 
lantic; and then the trip (made by the Sa- 
vannah in May, 1819) occupied twenty - two 
days. Another twenty years passed ere the 
new method of travel came into general use. 
New Yorkers had not yet acquired the habit 
of going abroad each summer. 

The evolution of the feeling that summer is 
the natural time for a universal hegira is very 
interesting for at the period of the Revolution 
there were not even c?a?/-excursions of irresistible 
attractiveness. A small party could ride out 
to Murray Hill in a hired carriage and be gone 
half a day for fourteen shillings, or by paying 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 143 

two shillings more could reach Gracie's Point 
opposite Hell Gate. But Long Branch and 
Saratoga were only just beginning to be known; 
in 1789 about a dozen respectable persons, in- 
cluding two or three New Yorkers, found them- 
selves "at a wretched tavern at Saratoga." 
Their opportunities for pleasure were such as 
may be had in a place where bathing accommo- 
dations *' consist of an open log hut, with a 
large trough, similar to those in use for feeding 
swine, which receives the water from the spring; 
into this you roll from off a bench! " ^ 

Mostly New Yorkers still summered in New 
York, snatching from the experience what 
pleasures they could. Horse-racing was a great 
solace; and as the hour set for the races was 
invariably one o'clock it would seem that the 
city summer could scarcely have been so in- 
tolerable then as it is now. After the race — 
in which the horses usually ran instead of trotted 
— the more select portion of the spectators 
would travel to one or another of the garden 
club-houses on the river-bank, for supper. 
Those who were not of " society " would journey 
to a public music-garden to drink tea — or 
something stronger — to the accompaniment 
of sweet sounds. One very popular place of 
this kind was called Vauxhall, a name, indeed, 
successively applied to several different places 

^Elkanah Watson. 



144 ROMANTIC DAYS 

the best known of which survived until 1855 
at just about where the Astor Library now stands. 
Niblo's Garden dates from 1830.^ 

No description that has come down to us of 
attractions at these later resorts equals in charm, 
however, that left by the Rev. William Burnaby, 
an English traveller, who visited the city in 
the last days of the colonial period and has told 
us of " several houses pleasantly situated up the 
East River, near New York, where it is common 
to have turtle-feasts. These happen once or 
twice a week. Thirty or forty gentlemen and 
ladies meet and dine together; drink tea in 
the afternoon, fish and amuse themselves 
until evening, and then return home in 
Italian chaises, a gentleman and lady in each 
chaise." 

Castle Garden, which in later years we have 
come to associate with incoming tides of Eu- 
ropean immigration, was a very fashionable 
resort in the twenties of the last century. On 
summer evenings its rows of wooden benches 
would be thronged by the quality of the town; 
and there Lafayette landed, on his return to 
America in 1824, "on a carpeted stairway 

1 Early in 1830, also, we find in Philip Hone's Diary a delightful 
allusion to Delmonico's, then just launched. " We satisfied our 
curiosity but not our appetites," writes Hone, " and I think we are 
prepared, when our opinions are asked, to say with the Irishman 
who used lamp-oil with his salad instead of olive-oil, that, if it were 
not for the name of the thing, he had as lief eat butter." 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 145 

arranged for the occasion, under an arch richly 
decorated with flags and wreaths of laurel." 
Later, after the nation's guest had made a tour 
of other cities, " a splendid fete and gala was 
given to him at Castle Garden, which for gran- 
deur, expense and entire effect was never before 
witnessed in this country. About six thousand 
persons were assembled in that immense area, 
and the evening being clear and calm, the whole 
passed off happily, owing to the excellent ar- 
rangements of the committee." 

Nothing which may be written of the early 
Republic, either in connection with New York 
or any of the other cities, is more satisfying than 
the welcome we extended to Lafayette in 1824. 
The noble old Frenchman had absolutely no 
idea what awaited him and on the voyage over 
was heard to make anxious inquiries of his 
fellow-passengers as to the cost of living and 
the price of travel in America. Obviously, he 
was fearful that his depleted purse might not 
be able to cope with the exigencies of the sit- 
uation! As his ship neared New York harbor, 
a great number of sailing-craft of all kinds, 
some bearing bands of music and all flying flags, 
met his eye and he asked as innocently as did 
the other passengers, " What does it mean? " 
He finally conjectured that it must betoken 
some anniversary of the American Republic 
of which he had not heard. Yet all this was, 



146 ROMANTIC DAYS 

of course, to greet him.^ And throughout his 
long journey it was everywhere the same. 

Lafayette's New York headquarters were at 
the City Hotel, a house which was to the opening 
years of the last century what the Astor House 
became to its middle period. Here on February 
22, 1819, a grand ball had been given by the 
Fourteenth Regiment in honor of General Andrew 
Jackson, and here, at a considerably later time, 
Dickens was entertained. It was a favorite 
resort of literary men when they were in funds. 
At other times they were more likely to be 
found at the Shakespeare Tavern at the corner 
of Nassau and Fulton Streets. 

One writer has said that the Shakespeare 
Tavern was to New York in the early nine- 
teenth century what the Mermaid was to London 
in the days of Shakespeare and the Turk's 
Head and St. James Coffee House to that same 
city at the time of Garrick, Goldsmith and Sir 
Joshua Reynolds. From the fact that the 
Shakespeare's manager, Thomas Hodgkinson, 
was brother of the one-time manager of the 
Park Theatre it became, and long continued, 
a great resort for the wits of the day. And for 

* Watson gives an interesting anecdote to prove that the Revo- 
lution had meant, in some degree at any rate, the aboUtion of class- 
distinctions in America. " But where are the people? " Lafayette 
is said to have inquired as he looked at the prosperous folk come out 
to greet him. Before the Revolution any workman wore his leather 
apron when on the street, " and never had on a long coat." 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 147 

workers and writers who were not so witty, 
too ! Here De Witt Clinton was wont to discuss 
his project of the Erie Canal and beneath this 
hospitable roof towards the end of its life (it 
was demolished in 1836) merchants, politicians 
and " military men " gathered often for stimulus 
and refreshment. 

As the nineteenth century was nearing the 
end of its first quarter there began to be founded 
the forerunners of those hosts of Bohemian 
eating-clubs which now flourish in New York. 
Perhaps the most interesting of these was the 
Bread and Cheese Club, originated in 1824 
through the instrumentality of James Feni- 
more Cooper. The selection of members for 
nomination to this fraternity rested entirely 
with Cooper, the ballots used being made of 
bread and of cheese. A cheese ballot served as 
does the more commonplace blackball in clubs 
which have no ambition to seem " unusual." 
Former politicians, poets, merchants and law- 
yers made up the membership here and on at 
least one occasion something quite interesting 
happened. Dr. Francis, who tells the story, ^ 
labels it ** curious as well as rare." A theatrical 
benefit, it seems, had been announced at the 
Park Theatre with " Hamlet " for the play. But, 
through some odd chance, no skull was avail- 
able for the graveyard scene and, at a late 

' In his Old New York. 



148 ROMANTIC DAYS 

hour, a subordinate of the theatre hurried to 
the office of Dr. Francis for a skull. " I was 
compelled," he says, " to loan the head of my 
old friend, George Frederick Cooke [the actor]. 
' Alas, poor Yorick ! ' 

" The skull was returned in the morning; 
but on the ensuing evening, at a meeting of 
the Cooper Club, the circumstance becoming 
known to several of the members, and a general 
desire being expressed to investigate phrenolog- 
ically the head of the great tragedian, the article 
was again released from its privacy, when Daniel 
Webster, Henry Wheaton and many others who 
enriched the meeting of that night, applied 
the principles of craniological science to the 
interesting specimen before them." 

Dr. Francis also records that the publishers 
of New York early demonstrated their belief 
in the commercial value of social gatherings. 
As early as 1802, he tells us, he attended a 
publishers' party at the old City Hotel under 
the auspices of the venerable Matthew Carey. 
Thirty years later he was one of a large assembly 
brought together by a Harper's dinner. Later 
still, on a similar occasion, he heard Bryant 
eloquently rejoice in the fact that the promise 
of American authorship, given by the appearance 
of Cotton Mather, had at last been redeemed. 
None the less, Francis shrewdly endorses, " as 
a result of personal observation and individual 




WILLIA.M (ULLEX liKVAXT IX lS2r). 
After a portrait hij S. F. B. Morse. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 149 

experience " the remark of the playwright, 
George Colman: *' Authorship, as a profession, 
is a very good walking-stick, but very bad 
crutches! " 

A famous gathering-place for politicians was 
Tammany Hall, built in 1811 on the site of 
what is now the Sun building. The Journal 
of William Maclay contains a puzzled reference 
to a Tammany celebration of 1790 which he 
characterizes as "a grotesque scene." " It 
being the old first of May," he says, " the Sons 
of Tammany had a grand parade through the 
town in Indian dresses. Delivered a talk at 
one of their meeting-houses and went away to 
dinner. There seems to be some kind of scheme 
laid of erecting some kind of order or society 
under this denomination, but it does not seem 
well digested as yet. The expense of the dresses 
must have been considerable and the money 
paid out on clothing might have dressed a num- 
ber of their ragged beggars." 

From this allusion to " their ragged beggars " 
it would appear that one, at least, of the original 
objects of this society — which dates from the 
Revolution — had been benevolence. Chiefly, 
however, the organization was formed for the 
purpose of being aggressively American. Tam- 
many, whom they decided to elect as their pa- 
tron saint, had been an Indian chief of the Dele- 
ware nation who lived in the seventeenth cen- 



150 ROMANTIC DAYS 

tury and signed the treaty with Penn. It 
was decided that he should be canonized as an 
offset to the foreign saints, Andrew, Patrick 
and George, each of whom had his own society 
and his devoted followers. For a time all the 
officers of St. Tammany's Society were native- 
born Americans and they never wearied of 
proclaiming their democracy — in contra-dis- 
tinction to the Cincinnati, whose membership, 
because hereditary, was held to be aristocratic 
in its tendencies. Some years later, the words, 
Columbian Order, were grafted upon Tammany's 
original name. The pernicious association of 
the Society with ring politics came later still 
and so is beyond the scope of this book. 

Of distinguished writers, who are immediately 
recognized as belonging to the very first rank, 
New York had astonishingly few at this period 
of the early Republic. There was Irving, of 
course, of whom considerable has already been 
said; and there were, also, Bryant and Cooper, 
with Poe just coming to the surface at the time 
(in the early thirties) we have set as the limit 
of the present work. The other men, however, 
whom James Grant Wilson has loyally celebrated 
as " Knickerbocker Authors " ^ are hardly 
more than names to the average reader of today. 
Fitz-Greene Halleck,^ James Kirke Paulding and 

1 In the Memorial History of The City of New York, vol. iv. 
" Dickens greatly admired Halleck's " Marco Bozzaris." 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 151 

Joseph Rodman Drake may have meant much 
to their own and the next generation, but their 
work is not read today and, save for their genial 
personahties, they would not be even mentioned 
here. Cooper, on the contrary, will always 
be honored as the author of The Spy (first 
pubHshed in New York in 1821) whether other 
of his books continue to be widely read or not. 
Similarly " Thanatopsis " will never allow Will- 
iam Cullen Bryant to be forgotten, " Home 
Sweet Home " will force us occasionally to 
recall the stormy career of John Howard Payne 
— and that other Paine, author of The Age 
of Reason will continue to be remembered, 
also, if only to prove how impotent persecution 
and misconception are to stifle real nobility 
of thought and expression! 

Cooper offers a delightful example of the 
accidental author, so to say. The story is 
told that, as he sat, one day, reading to his 
wife from an English society novel, he put down 
the book with the remark, "I believe I could 
write a better novel myself." "Write one!" 
his helpmeet said. And so he went to work, with 
the result that, in November, 1820, Precaution 
made its appearance in New York — adding one 
more to the wretched school of imitative English 
fiction whose tiresome sameness had induced 
its creation. Yet Cooper's friends saw in the 
book promise of real power and they urged him 



152 ROMANTIC DAYS 

to try again, offering the excellent advice that, 
this time, he stay on this side of the Atlantic 
and deal with the men and manners of which 
he had first-hand knowledge. He did so, and, 
in 1821, appeared the first truly American 
novel, founded upon the adventures of a real 
spy employed by John Jay during the Revolu- 
tion. Yet Cooper did not then know that he had 
produced a masterpiece and was as much sur- 
prised as were his publishers at the speedy recog- 
nition his book attained. Within six months of 
the day of issue the story passed through three 
editions in America, was dramatized and acted 
with success, was published in England, was 
translated into French, and gained for its 
unknown writer -^ the title of '* a distinguished 
American novelist." When it was announced 
that The Spy would be followed by The Pi- 
oneers public interest in this new. writer's work 
became so great that thirty-five hundred cop- 
ies of his picture of frontier life and manners 
were sold during the forenoon of the day of 
publication! What is more, his fame continued 
to increase and his work was eagerly bought and 
read up to the time of his death in 1851. 

As for the fame of Thomas Paine, who died 
in New York, in 1809 — that seems to grow 

^ The novel was published as The Spy: A Tale of Neutral Ground, 
by the author of Precaution. 2 vols. New York: Wiley and Halsted, 
1321. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 153 

rather than to decrease with the years. When 
Paine came to America from England in 
1774 his Quaker ancestry and the letters he 
bore from Franklin led him to settle in Phila- 
delphia, where, as editor of the Pennsylvania 
Gazette, he was immediately able to render 
immense service to the cause of the colonies. 
Edmund Randolph, a devout churchman, wri- 
ting long after the author's death, ascribed 
American independence primarily to George 
III and next to Thomas Paine. For besides 
column upon column of newspaper support 
Paine gave considerable money to the cause. 
Common Sense sold half a million copies at 
two shillings a copy and all this income was 
contributed to the patriots and their needs! 
Moreover, Paine himself fought at the front 
for his adopted country, headed liberally a 
subscription which tided Washington over his 
most trying financial crisis, helped Laurens 
effect the six million dollar loan from the French 
king — and in return received from the Republic 
in its prosperous days only the most meagre 
and grudging of recognitions. From 1787 until 
1802 Paine was absent from this country, and 
it was England and France which then gave 
him blows and buffets. But during this time 
he wrote his Rights of Man and The Age 
of Reason, the latter a work which has been 
so persistently misquoted that its author's 



154 ROMANTIC DAYS 

name is anathema today in most respectable 
circles. Yet the tone of this book is noble and 
reverent throughout and some of its doctrines 
are now recognized as not inimical to religion, 

111 health, persecution and an ever-increasing 
poverty conspired to send Paine to a humble 
little lodging in Greenwich to pass his closing 
days, and there, as it happens, he attracted the 
attention of John Randel, Junior, engineer 
to the Commissioners who prepared the present 
City Plan. " I boarded in the city," Mr. 
Randel writes, *' and in going to the office passed 
almost daily the house in Herring Street (later 
Bleecker Street) where Thomas Paine resided, 
and frequently in fair weather saw him sitting 
at the south window of the first-story room of 
that house. The sash was raised and a small 
table or stand placed before him, with an open 
book placed upon it which he appeared to be 
reading. He had his spectacles on, his left 
elbow rested upon the table or stand, and his 
chin rested between the thumb and fingers of 
his hand; his right hand lay upon his book, 
and a decanter containing liquor of the colour 
of rum or brandy was standing next his book 
or beyond it. I never saw Thomas Paine at 
any other place or in any other position." 

During Paine's last days two worthy divines 
of the neighborhood endeavored to bring him 
to a realizing sense of the error of his ways. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 155 

They were not successful in this attempt and 
the aged author instructed his housekeeper 
not to let them in if they should call again. 
So, when they returned to the attack the 
good woman denied them admission, saying 
to them, simply, as she did so, " If God does not 
change his mind I'm sure no human can." And 
no human did. Thomas Paine died in his 
unbelief and was buried in the grave beyond 
New Rochelle now marked by a monument 
which a later generation erected to his memory. 
The spot in which his remains rest is, however, 
unknown; for William Cobbett took them from 
New Rochelle to England, in 1818, and where 
they were finally deposited has always remained 
a mystery. 



CHAPTER III 

WASHINGTON 

GENERAL WASHINGTON always mod- 
estly designated as "the Federal City" the 
capital on the Potomac through which 
his name was to be memorialized. He was most 
anxious, however, that this city should stand 
just where it does and that every endeavor should 
be made to develop it into a centre worthy of 
a great and growing Republic. His letters offer 
abundant evidence that, as early as 1791, he 
was busying himself with the details of the under- 
taking; and soon after this he was strenuously 
arguing with old David Burnes, who owned and 
wished to keep a large lot of land in a valuable 
part of the new " ten mile square," that his 
country's needs should take precedence of 
personal convenience in the matter of holding 
this site. Tradition tells us that Burnes there- 
upon retorted : " Oh, I suppose you think people 
here are going to take every grist that comes from 
you as pure grain; but ichat icould you have been 
if you had not married the Widow Custis.^^ " 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 157 

Burnes's reluctance to entertain a capital 
unawares was eventua,lly overcome, however, 
and Pierre Charles I'Enfant was entrusted with 
the task of making and executing the necessary 
plans. Jefferson contributed largely to I'Enfant's 
information concerning beautiful cities. " In 
compliance with your request," wrote the Vir- 
ginian (in April, 1791), " I have examined my 
papers and found the plans of Frankfort-on- 
the-Mayne, Carlsruhe, Paris, Amsterdam, Stras- 
burg, Orleans, Bordeaux, Lyons, Montpelier, 
Marseilles, Turin, and Milan, which I send in 
a roll by the post. They are on large and ac- 
curate scale, having been procured by me while 
in those respective cities myself. As they are 
connected with notes I made in my travels, and 
often necessary to explain them to myself, I will 
beg your care of them and to return them when 
they are no longer useful to you, leaving you 
absolutely free to keep them as long as useful. 
I am happy that the President has left the plan- 
ning of the town in such good hands, and I 
have no doubt it will be done to general satis- 
faction." 

The way in which a capital site was awarded 
to a Southern State is an interesting piece of 
political history. New York did not lightly 
relinquish the honor that had been accorded 
her, and New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia, 
as well as Pennsylvania, coveted the distinction. 



158 ROMANTIC DAYS 

In all, no less than twenty-four different sites 
were proposed! Finally the House passed a 
bill selecting Pennsylvania but the Southern 
members, led by Madison, bitterly resented 
this and the measure was defeated in the Senate. 
The selection of the Potomac site was the result 
of a compromise reached only after a sectional 
struggle so fierce as to threaten the very life 
of the new nation. 

Gladstone once remarked that the United 
States furnished the first instance in history 
of the establishment of a national capital by 
legislative enactment. This enactment was, 
however, the outgrowth of a pohtical trade, 
so to say, for which Alexander Hamilton was 
bitterly blamed, at the time, by his fellow New 
Yorkers. The government was trying to fund 
its debts and one of the questions was whether 
it should also assume the debts incurred by 
the several States while carrying on the war. 
The Northern States were in favor of so doing, 
because they had furnished the greater portion 
of men and means; but those of the South ob- 
jected as it would increase their proportion. 
Hamilton found that some Southern votes 
would be necessary to carry the measure; and 
in connection with Jefferson, who wished to 
have the capital located in Virginia, or as near 
as possible, it was arranged that the latter should 
induce the Virginia delegation to vote for the 




ALEXAXDER HAMILTOX. 



From the portrait by Trumbull in the possession, of the Yale Unirersity School of Fine 

Arts. 




THOMAS JEFFERSON. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 159 

general assumption of the indebtedness, while 
Hamilton was to induce the New York delega- 
tion to give up their preference for the location 
of the capital in their chief city. This plan 
was carried out, but to placate Philadelphia 
it was decreed that the capital should remain 
there ten years. Then the nation's household 
was to be removed to the banks of the Potomac. 
L'Enfant had the brains, and the knowledge 
which should have made him a most successful 
leader in this important piece of town-plan- 
ning.^ But he, also, had so much " temperament'* 
that no one could work with him. His limita- 
tions were admirably summed up by Washing- 
ton when he said, " Major I'Enfant is as well 
qualified for the work as any man living, but 
the knowledge of this fact magnifies his self- 
esteem." And I'Enfant's self-esteem could not 
bear magnifying. So obstructive and un-co- 
operative did the gifted architect soon become 
that he had to be brusquely retired and his 
post, as head of the enterprise, given to Andrew 
Ellicott, a self-educated young Pennsylvania 
Quaker, who had been his assistant. The story 
of the building of Washington is full, indeed, of 
jealousies and bickerings on the part of the 
various architects who had a share in the en- 
terprise. On this account, as well as because 

^ Hia dream of a fair city is now, after a hundred years, to be 
logically worked outl 



160 ROMANTIC DAYS 

of the many physical difficulties to be overcome, 
work progressed slowly. When Washington 
looked last upon the new city, shortly before 
his death in 1799, it was still only a straggling 
settlement in the woods, almost wholly devoid 
of streets, with thirty or forty residences, — 
these for the most part small and uncomfortable, 
— and an unfinished Capitol and President's 
House. A few months after the President's 
death John Cotton Smith, than a member of 
Congress from Connecticut, wrote thus of 
the place: 

" Our approach to the city was accompanied 
with sensations not easily described. One wing 
of the Capitol only had been erected, which 
with the President's House, a mile distant 
from it, both constructed with white sandstone, 
were shining objects in dismal contrast with 
the scene around them. Instead of recognizing 
the avenues and streets portrayed on the plan 
of the city, not one was visible, unless we ex- 
cept a road with two buildings on each side of it 
called New Jersey Avenue. The Pennsylvania, 
leading, as is laid down on paper, from the Capi- 
tol to the Presidential mansion, was then nearly 
the whole distance a deep morass covered with 
alder-bushes, which were cut through the in- 
tended avenue during the ensuing winter. Be- 
tween the President's House and Georgetown 
a block of houses had been erected, which bore 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 161 

the name of the Six Buildings. There were 
also two other blocks consisting of two or three 
dwelling-houses, in different directions, and 
now and then an isolated wooden habitation; 
the intervening spaces and, indeed, the surface 
of the city generally, being covered with scrub- 
oak bushes on the higher grounds, and on the 
marshy soil either trees or some sort of shrubbery. 
Nor was the desolate aspect of the place aug- 
mented by the number of unfinished edifices 
which had been abandoned." 

The removal of the department archives 
from Philadelphia to Washington was effected 
in the spring of 1800 and the following month 
President Adams paid a visit of inspection to 
the new capital on his way to Quincy for the 
summer. 

It but remained for Mrs. Adams to inspect 
the callow city. We are very glad that she was 
not content merely to pour out in the bosom 
of her family her deep disappointment at what 
she found; for American literature would be 
considerably poorer without the following letter, 
sent to her daughter, on November 21, 1800: 

*' I arrived here on Sunday last and without 
meeting any accident worth noticing, except 
losing ourselves when we left Baltimore and 
going eight or nine miles on the Frederick road, 
by which means we were obliged to go the other 
night through woods, where we wandered 



162 ROMANTIC DAYS 

two hours without finding a guide or the path. 
. . . Woods are all you see until you reach the 
city, which is only so in name. . . . There are 
buildings enough if they were compact and 
finished, to accommodate Congress and those 
attached to it; but as they are, and scattered 
as they are, I see no great comfort for them. 
The river, which runs up to Alexandria, is in 
full view of my window, and I see the vessels 
as they pass and repass. The house is on a 
grand and superb scale, requiring about thirty 
servants to attend and keep the apartments 
in proper order, and perform the ordinary 
business of the house and stables; an estab- 
lishment very well proportioned to the Presi- 
dent's salary. The lighting the apartments 
from kitchen to parlours and chambers is a tax 
indeed; and the fires we are obliged to keep to 
secure us from daily agues is another very cheer- 
ing comfort. To assist us in this great castle 
and render less attendance necessary bells are 
wholly wanting, not one single one being hung 
through the whole house and promises are all 
you can obtain. This is so great an inconve- 
nience that I know not what to do or how to do 
... if they will put me up some bells and let 
me have wood enough to keep fires I design to 
be pleased. I could content myself almost 
anywhere three months. . . . There is not a 
single apartment finished. . . . We have not 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 163 

the least fence, yard or other convenience with- 
out, and the great unfinished audience-room I 
make a drying-room of, to hang up the clothes 
in. The principal stairs are not up and will 
not be this winter. Six chambers are made 
cocnf ortable ; two are occupied by the president 
and Mr. Shaw; two lower rooms, one for a 
common parlour, and one for a levee-room. 
Upstairs there is the oval room which is de- 
signed for the drawingroom, and has the crim- 
son furniture in it. It is a very handsome room 
now but when completed it will be beautiful. 
If the twelve years, in which this place has been 
considered as the future seat of government, 
had been improved, as they would have been 
in New England, very many of the present 
inconveniences would have been removed. But 
it is a beautiful spot, capable of every improve- 
ment." 

Capable of every improvement Washington 
long remained. Gouverneur Morris wittily 
declared it " the best city in the world for a 
future residence." And Oliver Wolcott wrote 
his wife, " I have i^ade every exertion to secure 
good lodgings near the office, but shall be com- 
pelled to take them at the distance of more than 
half a mile. There are, in fact, but few houses 
at any one place, and most of them small, 
miserable huts which present an awful contrast 
to the public buildings. The people are poor, 



164 ROMANTIC DAYS 

and as far as I can judge, they live like fishes — 
hy eating each other.'' 

In respect to its business quarters Congress 
was fairly well off, to be sure, for the completed 
wing of the Capitol afforded sufficient room for 
the sessions of both branches and $9,000 had 
been appropriated for furnishing it. Consider- 
ably less fortunate, as we have seen, were the 
members in the matter of personal accommoda- 
tion. If they lived in Georgetown, where there 
was agreeable society, they had to travel to and 
fro over very bad roads and, if they took lodgings 
near the Capitol, they were pretty certain to 
be uncomfortably crowded and pitifully cramped 
in their social pleasures. A letter from Gallatin 
to his wife shows us how very real were the hard- 
ships which these early legislators had to endure : 
" Our location," he wrote (January 15, 1801), 
" is far from being pleasant or even convenient. 
Around the Capitol are seven or eight boarding 
houses, one tailor, one shoemaker, one printer, 
a washing-woman, a grocery shop, a pamphlet 
and stationery shop, a small dry goods shop, 
and an oyster house. This makes the whole 
of the Federal City as connected with the Cap- 
itol. At the distance of three fourths of a mile, 
on or near the Eastern Branch, lie scattered the 
habitations of Mr. Law, of Mr. Carroll, the 
principal proprietors of the ground, half a 
dozen houses, a very large but perfectly empty 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 165 

warehouse, and a wharf graced by not a single 
vessel. And this makes the whole intended 
commercial part of the city, unless we include 
in it what is called the Twenty Buildings, 
being so many unfinished houses. ... I am 
at Conrad and Munn's, where I share the room 
of Mr. Varnum and pay at the rate, I think, 
including attendance, wood, candles and liquors, 
of 15 dollars per week. At table, I believe, we 
are from twenty -four to thirty, and, was it 
not for the presence of Mrs. Bailey and Mrs. 
Brown, would look like a refectory of monks.'* 

The Mr. Law referred to in this letter (and 
of whom Wolcott, writing to his wife, speaks 
as one who " lives in great splendor ") had not 
long before married Mrs. Washington's grand- 
daughter, Anne Custis. The alliance was to 
prove a most unhappy one, however, for the 
girl was high-spirited and only nineteen, and 
the groom, an Englishman nearly twice her 
age, developed, as time went on, several very 
trying eccentricities. One of these was to 
carry in his hand a piece of dough which he 
constantly manipulated, the loss of which 
would cause him to lose the thread of his story. 
Quite frequently he forgot his own name, and 
once, when asking for letters at the post-office, 
was unable to say to whom the letters would 
come addressed until a friend, saluting him as 
Mr. Law, gave him the necessary cue. Yet 



166 ROMANTIC DAYS 

he had been thought a great match for Miss 
Custis inasmuch as he was the brother of an 
EngHsh peer and of the Bishop of Wells. Law's 
early life had been passed in India with Lord 
Cornwallis; when he died in Washington at 
the age of seventy-seven he was still hoping 
and planning for the future greatness of the 
city in which he had rashly invested his 
all. 

Scarcely did Abigail Adams get fairly settled 
in the White House whose discomforts she had 
so vividly described than it became clear that 
not for long was she to remain mistress there. 
To her son she writes : 

*' Washington, November 13, 1800. 
" Well, my dear son, South Carolina has 
behaved as your father always said she would. 
The consequence to us, personally, is that we 
retire from public life. For myself and family 
I have few regrets. At my age and with my 
bodily infirmities I shall be happier at Quincy. 
Neither my habits, nor my education or incli- 
nations, have led me to an expensive style of 
living so that on that score I have little to 
mourn for. If I did not rise with dignity I 
can at least fall with ease, which is the more 
difficult task. . . . My own intention is to 
return to Quincy as soon as I conveniently can; 
I presume in the month of January." 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 167 

John Adams did not take so blithely retire- 
ment from the political field. " If I were to go 
over my life again," we find him saying, " I 
would be a shoemaker rather than an American 
statesman." After which illuminating glimpse 
of the man's deep wound at his failure to be 
reelected we are glad to know that Mistress 
Abigail never once faltered during this trying 
period of transition. Her husband deeply ap- 
preciated her " gameness." Soon after their 
return home he wrote to one of their children, 
" Your mother had a fine night's sleep which 
has made her as gay as a girl." And we find 
her, on May 3, 1801, buoyantly telling her son- 
in-law, " I have commenced my operations of 
dairy -woman and Mrs. Smith might see me, 
at five o'clock in the morning, skimming my 
milk! " Her consort, at this same dewy hour, 
was busy with his haymakers in the fields. It 
had not then become a problem what to do with 
our ex-presidents. 

John Adams had been born to the simple 
life and he returned to it, after he had recovered 
from the first blow to his self-esteem, easily 
and naturally. Yet, while in public service, 
he had always defended stateliness of demeanor. 
There is amusing evidence that the leveling 
tendency chargeable to the French Revolution, 
and ardently advocated by Jefferson, piqued 
and annoyed him extremely. In a letter which 



168 ROMANTIC DAYS 

he wrote to Dr. Rush in 1811 he said: "In 
point of Repubhcanism all the difference I 
ever knew or could discover between you and 
me, or between Jefferson and me, consisted 
(1) In the difference between speeches and 
messages, I was a monarchist because I thought 
a speech more manly, more respectful to Congress 
and the nation. Jefferson and Rush preferred 
messages. (2) I held levees once a week that 
all my time might not be wasted by idle visits, 
Jefferson's whole eight years was a levee. (3) 
I dined a large company once a week, Jefferson 
dined a dozen every day. (4) Jefferson and 
Rush were for liberty and straight hair. I 
thought curled hair was as Republican as 
straight." 

It is, of course, a fact that Jefferson made a 
cult of simplicity. Vulgarity, his political op- 
ponents called it, when he walked from his 
lodgings to the Capitol to be inaugurated and, 
having been sworn into office by Chief Justice 
Marshall, returned to his boarding-place, as 
he had come — on foot. Certainly his was not 
Simon-pure simplicity. Otherwise there would 
have been no need of eleven servants (slaves) 
from his plantation, besides a French cook and 
steward and an Irish coachman to conduct the 
affairs of his bachelor establishment. For the 
new President being a widower whose married 
daughters preferred their own homes for the 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 169 

most part to " queening it " in Washington, 
the White House was now without a mis- 
tress. 

Of none of the early Presidents is there so 
engaging a romance to be told as of Jefferson. 
The lady he had married, nearly thirty years 
before this time, was Mrs. Martha Skelton, a 
beautiful and accomplished young widow with 
soft hazel eyes and luxuriant auburn hair. 
She walked, rode and danced with inimitable 
grace and spirit and was renowned throughout 
the Old Dominion as a player upon the harpsi- 
cord. Of course, such a woman, who had wealth 
in addition to personal charms, was much sought 
after by the eligible youth of her county. Two 
of these once chanced to meet at the door of her 
house and were shown into a room adjoining 
one where she was singing and playing the harp- 
sichord to the accompaniment of Mr. Jefferson's 
violin and voice. The suitors listened for a 
stanza or two; then they crept quietly away 
convinced that they had absolutely no chance 
against the musical caller within. Jefferson 
had ten happy years of married life with this 
lovely woman and he never sought a successor 
for her. During part of the time that he was in 
Washington as President his daughter, who had 
married Thomas Mann Randolph, himself a 
member of Congress, made the White House her 
home but, for the most, he had to borrow, on 



170 ROMANTIC DAYS 

state occasions, the presence of Mrs. Madison ^ 
as hostess. 

A unique feature of the campaign preceding 
Jefferson's election was the extraordinary dem- 
onstration of behef in him made by Elder 
Leland and his followers, of Cheshire in New 
England. By his opponents Jefferson had been 
declared a foreigner in his tastes, un-American, 
unpatriotic and a French infidel.^ Certain of 
his opponents went so far as to say that, if 
he were elected, Sunday would no longer be 
observed and churches throughout the country 

' From the " collection of period costumes " being arranged at 
the old National Museum, Washington, as this book goes to press, 
it appears that, about this time, Mrs. Madison introduced into 
Republican circles the empire gown made famous in Paris by the 
lovely R^camier and the women of Napoleon's court. The waist- 
line was entirely obscured by this fashion and the bodice shortened, 
in some cases, to an inch. A portrait of Mrs. Madison, showing 
her in such a toilet is extant. The figures in the " collection " 
during the Monroe period show, on the contrary, that black dresses, 
especially of velvet and satin, have now come into vogue and that 
bodices gradually lengthened until the waist-line dropped to its 
natural level. Skirts were now very full and very much flounced. 
With the advent of the Quincy Adamses came the reign of the 
grotesque leg-o'-mutton sleeve, short full skirt and gigantic poke 
bonnet. This lasted through Jackson's administration as well. 
The shoulders of women's gowns were at this time so much " ex- 
tended," that ladies had to edge sidewise through doors. And when 
Jackson was running for president the wives and sisters of his 
partisans wore calico printed with great medallions bearing his 
rugged features! 

^ In refutation of these absurd slanders Mrs. Samuel Harrison 
Smith was glad to wTite that during Mr. Jefferson's first winter 
in Washington he regularly worshipped at the rude church which 
the Episcopalians of the place had fitted up in a building formerly 
used as a tobacco-house. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 171 

would be closed! Elder Leland of Cheshire 
believed none of these things and, having pre- 
viously preached many sturdy electioneering 
sermons in Jefferson's behalf, proposed to his 
people, as soon as the election was secure, 
that they should celebrate the victory by making 
for the new President the biggest cheese the 
world had ever seen. " Every man and woman 
who owned a cow," was on a certain day, 
writes Dr. Manasseh Cutler, then a member of 
Congress, " to give for this cheese all the milk 
yielded that day — only no Federal cow must 
contribute a drop. A huge cider press was 
fitted up to make it in, and on the appointed 
day the whole county turned out with pails 
and tubs of curd, the girls and women in their 
best gowns and ribbons, and the men in their 
Sunday coats and clean shirt-collars. The 
cheese was put to press with prayer and hymn 
singing and great solemnity. When it was well 
dried it weighed sixteen hundred pounds. It 
was placed on a sleigh and elder Leland drove 
with it all the way to Washington. It was a 
journey of three weeks. All the country had 
heard of the big cheese and came out to look 
at it as the elder drove along." Six horses were 
used to draw this unique offering and on its 
side it bore a label inscribed : " The greatest 
cheese in America for the greatest man in 
America!" 



172 ROMANTIC DAYS 

The elder and his offering were most cordially 
received at Washington. Jefferson was himself 
a farmer and so interested in cheeses. He was, 
also, interested to prove himself thoroughly 
democratic and a true Apostle of Simplicity. 
The chief article of furniture in his own particu- 
lar room at the White House was a long table 
with a set of carpenter's tools tucked away in 
the drawers of one side, and a set of gardener's 
tools similarly disposed at its other end. There 
was no affectation in Jefferson's love of the out- 
of-doors and in his deep affection for trees. 
Once at a dinner party he exclaimed abruptly, 
" How I wished that I possessed the powers of 
a despot!" then explaining, in answer to the 
astonished look called forth by a declaration 
so opposed to his disposition and principles, 
*' I wish I was a despot that I might save the 
noble beautiful trees that are daily falling sac- 
rifices to the cupidity of their owners, or the 
necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling 
of a tree — perhaps the growth of centuries — 
seems to me a crime little short of murder; it 
pains me to an unspeakable degree." 

In the window recesses of the room used as an 
office by this President who so loved Nature 
were flowers and plants to which he attended 
personally, " And among his roses and gera- 
niums," Mrs. Smith tells us, *' was suspended 
the cage of his favourite mocking-bird, which 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 173 

he cherished with peculiar fondness, not only 
for its melodious powers, but for its uncommon 
intelligence and affectionate disposition, of 
which qualities he gave surpassing instances. 
It was the constant companion of his solitary 
and studious hours. Whenever he was alone 
he opened the cage and let the bird fly about 
the room. After flitting for a while from one 
object to another, it would alight on his table 
and regale him with its sweetest notes, or perch 
on his shoulder and take its food from his lips. 
Often, when he retired to his chamber, it would 
hop up the stairs after him, and while he took 
his siesta, would sit on his couch and pour 
forth its melodious strains. How he loved this 
bird! How he loved his flowers! He could not 
live without something to love and, in the 
absence of his darling grandchildren, his bird 
and his flowers became objects of tender 
care." 

Apart from this one room the White House 
of Jefferson's day appears to have been a bare 
and unhomelike place. It was scantily furnished 
with articles brought from Philadelphia and 
which had been used by General Washington. 
From respect to their former possessor Jefferson 
retained these, worn and shabby though they 
were. In the drawing-room was the same crim- 
son damask furniture that had been used in 
Philadelphia and only the most meagre and 



174 ROMANTIC DAYS 

simple additional articles had been provided 
by the government for the more spacious man- 
sion. The large East Room was still unfinished. 
But this mattered little to Jefferson. He had 
no mind to " entertain " largely. One of the 
first things he did after coming to the White 
House was to abolish the levees which Washing- 
ton and Adams had punctiliously maintained, 
limiting to January first and the Fourth of 
July public receptions at the Executive Mansion. 
At other times persons were privileged to call 
as they pleased. Sometimes they were greatly 
disturbed by what they encountered. It is 
said that a foreign functionary who went one 
morning to pay the President a visit of ceremony 
found that gentleman just drawing on his 
boots and prepared with a shoe-brush to give 
them a polishing touch. Of course the visitor 
was shocked. So shocked that the story seems 
to me apocryphal. A Virginian brought up to 
be waited upon by slaves was not one to be 
brushing his own shoes; but of course those who 
resented the perfectly tenable social rules Jef- 
ferson had promulgated would draw upon their 
imaginations for stories which should make 
the Democratic President ridiculous. 

The basic idea of Jefferson's social rules was 
that " when brought together in society all 
are perfectly equal, whether foreign or domestic, 
titled or untitled, in or out of office." In ac- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 175 

cordance with this idea Mr. Jefferson, at one 
of his rare state dinners, committed the " un- 
pardonable sin " of taking in the lady who stood 
next to him — Mrs. Madison, — and requesting 
his guests to do the same. Mr. Merry, the newly 
appointed British minister, thus found himself 
obliged to offer his arm to his own wife! And 
he — more likely she — never forgave Jefferson 
for the slight this choice of Mrs. Madison had 
put upon the English lady. Sir Augustus Foster 
loyally upheld his chief and his chief's lady in 
their resentment, deprecatingly comparing the 
present lack of '* etiquette " at the Executive 
Mansion with the " good old days." '' Mr. 
Jefferson," he argued hotly, " knew only too 
well what he was about — he had lived in too 
good society at Paris, where he was employed 
as Minister from the United States previously 
to the French Revolution. . . not to set a 
value on the decencies and proprieties of life. 
But he was playing a game for retaining the 
highest office in a State where manners are 
not a prevailing feature in the great mass of 
society." 

Perhaps Jefferson was *' playing a game." 
At any rate he was persistent in adhering to his 
stand, once taken. When some of the fashionable 
ladies, who were affronted that he had abolished 
levees, one day swarmed down upon his home 
by a concerted arrangement, he went in among 



176 ROMANTIC DAYS 

them, dusty as he was from his ride, and while 
apologizing for his spurs and disarranged cos- 
tume, bade them welcome with such studied 
charm that they could not miss the conviction 
that the joke was on them instead of on the 
President. Dr. Manasseh Cutler on the other 
hand records so many dinners at "his Demo- 
cratic Majesty's " that we may well believe 
the story that Jefferson made himself poor by 
his liberality while at the White House. Lemaire, 
who was the purveyor for the household, told 
Edmund Bacon, the steward from Jefferson's 
Virginia estate, Monticello, that he frequently 
spent fifty dollars upon one day's marketing. 
Which one may easily credit after reading that 
the bill of fare — besides having on it fried eggs 
and fried beef — often included, as on one 
occasion when Dr. Cutler was there, turkeys, 
ducks, " the new foreign dish macaroni," ices, 
and various fancy -pudding dishes, among them 
" a new kind of pudding, very porous and light, 
inside white as milk of curd, covered with cream 
sauce." 

The lady who did the honors at Jefferson's 
dinners whenever neither of the President's 
daughters was available and it was necessary 
that some woman act as hostess, was Mrs. 
James Madison, wife of the Secretary of State. 
Thus began that extraordinary career of social 
ascendency at Washington which, with only 




MRS. MARTHA JEFFERSON RANDOLPH. 
Pro-n the portrait by Stuart in the possession of Mrs. Algernon. Coolidge of Boston. 




DOLLY MADISON. 



From a miniature by James Peale in the possession of her great-niece. Miss Lucia B. 
Cults of Boston. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 177 

a few interruptions, lasted for over forty years! 
Mrs. Madison still retained at this time much 
of that exquisite beauty which was embalmed 
by James Peale in the charming miniature made 
just about the time of her marriage to Madison 
and herewith reproduced. It is pleasant to see 
that, when sitting to Peale, Mistress Dolly 
wore her Quaker cap. From her later life it is 
hard to recall that she was a Quaker by birth. 
Even as a child, indeed, there seems to have been 
very little of the Quaker about her training. 
Both her mother and her grandmother had been 
belles and they evidently had resolved that the 
dainty Dolly should lose no jot or tittle of her 
dower of good looks by any neglect on their 
part. So she was sent to school with long gloves 
on her hands and arms and with a close sun- 
bonnet and a white linen mask on her face. But 
in this attention to her outward charms, her 
inward graces were not neglected. No more 
sweet and lovely character may be found in 
all our history than that of Dolly Madison. 
At nineteen she had been married by her father 
to Mr. Todd, a lawyer of Philadelphia, and within 
two years had borne this worthy man two 
children, the ifirst of whom, John Payne Todd, 
lived to be the joy and the heartbreaking sorrow 
of her womanhood. Ere she was twenty -two, 
however, both her husband and her second 
baby had died, and thus it was that, in 1794, 



178 ROMANTIC DAYS 

she was being sought out in Philadelphia by 
all the eligible men of the day, among them 
James Madison, twenty years her senior, who 
arranged that Aaron Burr should take him to 
the Payne home and introduce him to the 
fascinating young widow. When Dolly came 
down that day " in a mulberry colored satin, 
and a silk tulle handkerchief over her neck, 
and on her head an exquisitely dainty little 
cap from which an uncropped curl would es- 
cape " she must have looked very much as in 
our picture. We do not at all wonder that 
James Madison fell head over heels in love with 
her and promptly set about to make her his 
wife. When Mrs. Washington heard of the 
engagement she told Mistress Dolly that she 
was very glad indeed " for James Madison would 
make her a good husband." Which appears to 
have been a true prophecy. 

It is also true that no wife was ever more 
devoted to a husband than this lovely woman 
to her "great little Madison." Dr. Mitchell, 
who was in turn representative and senator 
from New York, said of her in 1802: " She has 
a fine person and a most engaging countenance, 
which pleases, not so much from mere symmetry 
or complexion as from expression. Her smile, 
her countenance and her manners are so en- 
gaging, that it is no wonder that . . . with 
her fine blue eyes and large share of anima- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 179 

tion, she should be, indeed, a QUEEN OF 
HEARTS." 

In and out of the drawing-rooms of George- 
town, where this lady " queened it," there flitted, 
early in Jefferson's administration, a poet who 
could very well, had it happened to occur to him, 
have celebrated Mrs. Madison's unique charms. 
This was Tom Moore, then twenty -four years old. 
Because slight and dandified, Moore had so 
little impressed Jefferson, when the latter met 
him at a reception, that after the merest word 
or two the poet was allowed by the President 
to get lost in the crowd. This the gifted Irish- 
man could not forgive and so fell to lampooning 
Jefferson and pretty much everything else Ameri- 
can. But not Niagara Falls ! I have been priv- 
ileged to examine the scarcely-legible manu- 
script journal in which Moore recorded his 
enthusiasm over the beauty of the falls and one 
there sees that his emotion was so great that he 
could scarcely find words to express it. " Never 
shall I forget," he wrote, " the impression I 
felt at the first partial glimpse of them, which 
we got as the carriage climbed over the hill 
that overlooks them. We were not near enough 
to be agitated by the terrific effects of the scene 
but I saw through the trees this mighty flow 
of waters descending with [manuscript illegible] 
magnificence and received just enough of its 
grandeur to set imagination on the wing. ... I 



180 ROMANTIC DAYS 

felt as if approaching the very residence of 
the Deity. ^ The tears started into my eyes 
and I remained, for some moments after we 
had lost sight of the scene, in that delicious 
absorption which only pious enthusiasm can 
produce. . . . My whole heart ascended toward 
the Divinity in a swell of devout admiration 
which I never before experienced. Oh, bring 
an atheist here and he cannot return an atheist. 
I pity the man who can coldly sit down to write 
a description of these ineffable wonders. ... It 
is impossible, by pen or by pencil, to convey the 
faintest idea of their magnificence. Painting 
is lifeless; the most burning words of poetry 
have all been lavished upon inferior subjects. 
One should have new combinations of language 
to describe the falls of Niagara! " 

" Why, he is a poet after all! " Jefferson is said 
to have exclaimed when, years after his lampoon- 
ing at Moore's hands, he was given a volume 
of the Irish melodies. " So this is the little man 
who satirized me so ! " The great Democrat, it is 
thus clear, bore the little Irishman no malice; 
indeed Moore shared with Burns the leisure 
hours of the retired statesman. 

* It is interesting to set alongside of this outburst of splendid faith 
in a good and gracious Creator Thomas Paine's belief that " the- 
ology should be studied in the works or books of the creation." 
Thus studied it " causes the mind to become at once enlightened and 
serene. Information and adoration go hand in hand." {Existence 
of Gcd.) 



IX THE EARLY REPUBLIC 181 

Jefferson was very glad to go *' back to the 
farm " when his time came to lay down the 
cares of office. There is no question that he 
could have had a third term as President, if 
he had allowed himself to be nominated, but 
he accepted as wise the precedent established 
by Washington in this matter and blithely re- 
linquished to his successor, James Madison, 
his post as Chief Executive. Never was he 
more witty and more charming than at Mrs. 
Madison's first reception in the ^Tiite House. 
As the ladies pressed near him, a friend whis- 
pered jestingly, " You see, they will follow you.'* 
" That is as it should be," answered Jefferson, 
" since I am too old to follow them. I remem- 
ber," he added, " when Dr. Franklin's friends 
were taking leave of him in France, the ladies 
almost smothered him with embraces. On his 
introducing me to them as his successor, I 
told them that among the rest of his pri\^leges, 
I wished he would transfer this one to me. But 
he answered, ' No, no; you are too young a 
man.' " 

WTiat appears to have been Washington's 
first inaugural ball was given at Davis's Hotel 
the evening that Jefferson relinquished to Mad- 
ison the " heavy burden " of a President. It 
is said that " upwards of four hundred persons 
graced the scene, which was not a little enlivened 
by the handsome display of female fashion 



182 ROMANTIC DAYS 

and beauty." Of course the " Lady President- 
ess " was the centre of all eyes on this occasion. 
And that not only because she was a Queen of 
Hearts; she must also have been a splendid 
figure to look upon in her gown of yellow velvet, 
her neck and arms hung with pearls and her 
head surmounted by a Parisian turban, from 
which nodded a bird-of-paradise plume. 

No more Jeffersonian simplicity now at the 
White House! A contemporary writer tells 
us that the Presidential mansion was refurnished 
"splendidly" throughout; and it is probably 
true that Dolly Madison procured all the splen- 
dor she could for the modest sum of five thou- 
sand dollars allowed for the purpose. An ad- 
ditional thousand was granted Mr. Latrobe, 
we learn, for the curtains, chairs and sofas of 
the drawing-room, which was done all in yellow 
satin damask. Here Mrs. Madison was soon 
receiving her own friends, her husband's and 
those who came just to pay their respects, with 
that sunniness of manner which has made her 
name almost a synonym for tact and hospitality. 
Even shy and awkward youths from the country 
were at once put at their ease by her. William 
C. Preston, in his unpublished journal,^ gives 
an instance of this from his own experience 
which may well stand as typical: He was then 
eighteen — and so full of self-consciousness. 

^ Quoted by Mrs. EUet in Court Circles of the Republic. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 183 

No wonder there had been " utter silence in 
the hack! " as he made his way to the White 
House. He says, ** The appearance of the 
house and grounds was very grand. There 
was a multitude of carriages at the door; many 
persons were going in and coming out ; especially 
many in gaudy regimentals. Upon entering a 
room where there were fifteen or twenty persons, 
Mr. Madison turned toward us, and the General 
said, presenting me, * My young kinsman, Mr. 
Preston, who has come to present his respects 
to you and Mrs. Madison.' The President was 
a little man with a powdered head, having an 
abstracted air and a pale countenance, with but 
little flow of courtesy. Around the room was 
a blaze of military men and naval ofiicers in 
brilliant uniforms. The furniture of the room 
with the brilliant mirrors was very magnificent. 
" While we stood Mrs. Madison entered — 
a tall, portly elegant lady, with a turban on her 
head and a book in her hand. She advanced 
straight to me and, extending her left hand, 
said: 'Are you William Campbell Preston, 
the son of my old friend and most beloved kins- 
woman, Sally Campbell.^ ' I assented. She 
said: * Sit down, my son; for you are my son 
and I am the first person who ever saw you in 
this world. Mr. Madison, this is the son of 
Mrs. Preston, who was born in Philadelphia.' 
The President shook hands with me cordially. 



184 ROMANTIC DAYS 

. . . All this was performed with an easy 
grace and benignity which no woman in the 
world could have exceeded. My awkwardness 
and terror suddenly subsided into a romantic 
admiration for the magnificent woman before 
me." 

Washington Irving gives us a similarly agree- 
able snap-shot impression of one of these Draw- 
ing Rooms, where he found '* a crowded collection 
of great and little men, of ugly old women 
and beautiful young ones. . . . Mrs. Madison 
is a fine, portly buxom dame, who has a smile 
and a pleasant word for everybody. Her sisters, 
Mrs. Cutts and Mrs. Washington, are like the 
two merry wives of Windsor; but as to Jemmy 
Madison — ah ! poor Jemmy ! — he is but a 
withered little apple- John." 

From a passage in another Irving letter, writ- 
ten about this same time, we learn how really 
primitive in some ways the social life of the time 
was — even in the nation's capital. *' When you 
see my good friend Mrs. Ren wick," he writes 
Mrs. Hoffman, " tell her I feel great compunc- 
tion at having deprived her of her Tartan pladdie 
all winter; but if it will be any gratification to 
her she may be assured it has been of signal 
comfort to me, and has occasionally served as a 
mantle to some of the prettiest girls in Washington.** 

This is the more interesting when it is re- 
called that Mrs. Ren wick was the heroine of 




JAMES MADISON." 

From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart in the possession of Dowdoin College. 




« 

S 

S 
O 

a 
o 



C3 S 

M CO 

^ CO 

o a 

I? H 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 185 

Burns's " Blue-eyed Lassie ", that she had 
often as a girl met Burns at her father's fireside 
and had inspired in him, besides the verses to 
her blue eyes, which are printed in every collec- 
tion of his works, the song " When first I saw my 
Jeanie's face," which is scarcely known at all 
but whose charming last stanza makes it well 
worth reprinting here. 

" But gang she east, or gang she west, 
'Twixt Nith and Tweed all over, 
While men have eyes, or ears or taste. 
She'll always find a lover." 

It was to the lovely lass of Annandale, whom 
the Scotch bard had thus celebrated, and whose 
New York home was a cherished resort of 
Irving's, that the author of the Sketch Book 
was indebted for the slip of ivy from Melrose, 
which, planted with her own hands, runs now 
in rich luxuriance over the walls of Sunnyside. 

We must, however, hark back to Washington 
with its gracious " Lady Presidentess " and 
her " withered little apple- John " of a " Jemmy." 
Unquestionably Mrs. Madison was much hap- 
pier in social life than the President could 
possibly be. He took no pleasure in the crowded 
dinners and parties which meant much to her. 
Moreover he was bowed down by heavy cares 
of state; for the War of 1812 was at hand. 
Presently a British fleet actually sailed up into 



186 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Virginia waters and the White House family 
were told that the enemy had come determined 
to " burn them out," Admiral Cockburn send- 
ing the President's wife word that he would very 
soon make his bow at her drawing-room door 
and his officers pleasantly adding that they 
would capture the beautiful Mrs. Madison and 
" make a show of her in England! " It appears, 
too, that the British came fairly near fulfilling 
these threats. For peace-loving James Madison 
was no leader of armies and, when he saw the 
bayonets of the enemy glittering in the distance, 
he ingloriously directed his companions to 
leave Blandensburg to the commanding general. 
Whereupon, he and Armstrong and Monroe 
clambered into a waiting carriage and drove 
rapidly away in the direction of Washington. 
Much sport was afterwards made of this retreat 
of the Commander-in-Chief from the field of 
battle and a New York newspaper writer 
wittily declared that 

"'Fly, Monroe, fly! Run, Armstrong, run!' 
Were the last words of Madison." 

Dolly proved herself really heroic, however. 
To her sisters she wrote as the enemy drew near, 
" I am ready. I have pressed as many Cabinet 
papers into trunks as to fill one carriage. 
Our private property must be sacrificed, as 
it is impossible to procure wagons for its trans- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 187 

porta tion. I am determined not to go myself 
until I see Mr. Madison safe and he can ac- 
company me. My friends and acquaintances are 

all gone, even Colonel C with the hundred 

men, who were stationed as a guard in this 
enclosure." Only after two messengers had 
arrived from Mr. Madison, urging her flight, 
did the plucky woman consent to set forth 
without her husband. Before leaving she pro- 
vided for the safety of the large picture of 
General Washington by Stuart, which was 
hanging in the dining-room, by causing it to 
be removed from its heavy frame and commit- 
ting it to the care of Jacob Barker and Robert 
G. L. Depeyster, who temporarily secreted it 
in a farmhouse outside the city. 

To the struggle which culminated in this 
attack upon Washington it is that we owe the 
" Star Spangled Banner " and, though the story 
of the special crisis which gave occasion to that 
song really belongs to the Baltimore chapter, 
Francis Scott Key must here be mentioned be- 
cause his home at this period was in George- 
town. Georgetown is, also, associated, with 
another American whom we remember as the 
author of a single song — John Howard Payne. 
For there in Oak Hill Cemetery rest today the 
mortal remains of the homeless poet who, 
in touching strains, has celebrated for all time 
the sweet and tender joys of home. 



188 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Washington had known Payne in hfe, too, how- 
ever. For he was often in the city, during the 
period of the Early Repubhc, visiting Joel Bar- 
low,^ poet and philosopher, who upon his return 
from a mission to France, in 1805, had built his 
mansion Kalorama on a natural terrace above 
Rock Creek, not far from Twenty-first Street. 
The Barlows were great friends of the Madisons 
and there is extant a delightful letter written them 
by Mistress Dolly, during one of their visits to 
France, in which she requests that they send 
her " by a safe vessel large head-dresses, a 
few flowers, feathers, gloves and stockings, 
black and white, with anything else pretty and 
suitable for an economist." 

When the President and Mrs. Madison re- 
turned to Washington, forty-eight hours after 
their flight, they found their home a black and 
still-smoking ruin. Admiral Cockburn and his 
men had spectacularly worked their will. For 
some months now the Presidential headquarters 
were in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Richard 
Cutts on F Street and then the Madisons re- 
moved to the Octagon, which Colonel John 
Tayloe generously placed at their disposal. 

Colonel Tayloe was reputed to be the richest 
Virginian of his time and no house in all Wash- 

1 It was to this Joel Barlow that Elizabeth Whitman, generally 
believed to have furnished Hawthorne with the central idea of 
The Scarlet Letter, wrote the only letters of hers which have been 
preserved. See my Old New England Churches, p. 23 et seq. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 189 

ington has seen more of magnificent entertain- 
ing than this splendid one at the junction of 
New York Avenue and Eighteenth Street. 
The reception given here by the President and 
Mrs. Madison after the signing of the Treaty 
of Ghent, is described by residents of the capital 
as the most brilliant ever held in Washington. 
Mrs. Madison, knowing that peace was assured 
and that her beloved husband had been restored 
to popularity, was especially happy. Now, even 
more than previously in the Wliite House, in- 
deed, her parties and receptions were brilliancy 
itself. It may very well have been at about this 
time that the Friend from Philadelphia whom 
she had invited to dinner replied to her toast, 
" Here's to thy absent broadbrim. Friend Hal- 
lowell," with the undaunted, " And here's to 
thy absent kerchief. Friend Dorothy! " Wash- 
ington ladies were rather exaggeratedly de- 
colletee at this period. Mrs. Seaton wrote that 
Madame Bonaparte, having set the fashion in 
this way,^ was eagerly imitated by all the 

^ Was it of Madame Bonaparte, we wonder, that Mrs. Smith 
wrote, in 1804: " An elegant and select party was given her by Mrs. 
Robert Smith; her appearance was such that it threw all the com- 
pany into confusion, and no one dar'd to look at her but by stealth. 
. . . Her dress was the thinnest sarcenet and white crepe. . . ; 
there was scarcely any waist to it and no sleeves; her back, her bosom, 
part of her waist and her arms were uncovered and the rest of her 
form visible. She was engaged the next evening at Madam P's . . . 
and several ladies sent her word, if she wished to meet them there 
she must promise to have more clothes on." 



190 ROMANTIC DAYS 

belles. " But without equal eclat, as Madame 
Bonaparte has certainly the most transcend- 
ently beautiful back and shoulders that ever 
were seen." Mrs. Seaton, also, professed her- 
self much shocked at the amount of powder 
and rouge used by the Washington women. 
" Mrs. Madison is said to rouge, but it is not 
evident to my eyes, and I do not think it true, 
as I am well assured I saw her colour come and 
go at the naval ball." Mrs. Seaton was the 
wife of the editor of the National Intelligencer 
and she has photographically described ^ for us 
many a splendid party of the day. She is not 
above telling us, too, how and when and what 
Washington people ate — in the privacy of home 
as well as at levees — for which we are very grate- 
ful to her. "It is customary," she writes her 
mother, " to breakfast here at nine o'clock, 
dine at four and drink tea at eight, which divi- 
sion of time I do not like but am compelled to 
submit. I am more surprised at the method 
of taking tea here than any other meal. In 
private families, if you step in of an evening, 
they give you tea and crackers and cold bread, 
and, if by invitation, unless the party is very 
splendid, you have a few sweet-cakes, — mac- 
carroons [sic] from the confectioner's. This 
is the extent. Once I saw a ceremony of pre- 
serves at tea. But the deficiency is made up 

1 In William Winston Seaton:, A Biographical Sketch. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 191 

by the style at dinner, with extravagant wines 
etc. Pastry and puddings going out of date and 
wine and ice-creams coming in, does not suit 
my taste, and I confess to preferring Raleigh 
hospitality. I have never even heard [here] of 
warm bread at breakfast." 

Mrs. Madison's levee of New Year's Day, 
1814, has been so vividly described by Mrs. 
Seaton that we can almost see the paint rolling 
down from the ladies' cheeks as she pictures 
this sad result of over-heated apartments. " The 
marine band, stationed in the ante-room, con- 
tinued playing in spite of the crowd pressing 
on their very heads. But if our pity was ex- 
cited for these hapless musicians, what must 
we not have experienced for some members of 
our own sex, who, not foreseeing the excessive 
heat of the apartments, had more reason to 
apprehend the efforts of nature to relieve her- 
self from the effects of the confined atmos- 
phere. [!] You will perhaps not understand that I 
allude to the rouge which some df our fashion- 
ables had laid on with unsparing hand, and 
which, assimilating with the pearl-powder, 
dust and perspiration, made them altogether 
unlovely to soul and to eye. 

" Her majesty's appearance was truly regal, 
— dressed in a robe of pink satin trimmed elab- 
orately with ermine, a white velvet and satin 
turban, with nodding ostrich plumes and a 



192 ROMANTIC DAYS 

crescent in front, gold chain and clasps around 
the waist and wrists. 'Tis here the woman 
who adorns the dress, and not the dress that 
beautifies the woman. I cannot conceive a 
female better calculated to dignify the station 
which she occupies in society than Mrs. Madison. 
Amiable in private life and affable in public, 
she is admired and esteemed by the rich and 
beloved by the poor. You are aware that she 
snuffs; but in her hands the snuff-box seems 
only a gracious implement with which to charm. 
Her frank cordiality to all guests is in contrast 
to the manner of the President, who is very 
formal, reserved and precise,^ yet not wanting 
in a certain dignity. Being so low of stature, 
he was in imminent danger of being confounded 
with the plebeian crowd; and was pushed and 
jostled about like a common citizen, — but 
not so with her ladyship ! The towering feathers 
and excessive throng distinctly pointed out her 
station wherever she moved." It is to Mrs. 
Seaton, too, that we owe that famous story 

1 Mrs. Smith, who knew Madison in his home-life, tells us re- 
peatedly, however, that his excessive dignity was only his public 
manner. It appears that he was really an incessant humorist and, 
at Montpelier, used to set his table guests daily into roars of laughter 
over his stories and his whimsical way of telling them. As late as 
1828 she writes, while visiting at the Madisons' home, " Mr. Madison 
retains all the sportiveness of his character. His little blue eyes . . . 
have not lost the look of mischief that used to lurk in their corners, 
and which vanished and gave place to an expression ever solemn, 
when the conversation took a serious turn." 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 193 

about the exceedingly good breakfast Lafayette 
made when he was at Washington: six fine 
bay perch, considerable bread, Bordeaux, 
and hominy, and, to top off, a whole canvas- 
back duck! Not that Lafayette had developed 
into a gourmand but that he was made vora- 
ciously hungry by being so much in the open 
air, speech-making and viewing processions. 

Mrs. Benjamin W. Crowninshield of Salem, 
whose husband was to be Secretary of the Navy 
under Monroe, wrote home delightfully chatty 
letters about Washington in the winter of 1815- 
1816. Almost immediately after her arrival 
she went " with our girls to see Mrs. Madison. 
She lives in the same block with us. I did not 
alter my dress. Well, we rung at the door, 
the servant showed us up to the room — no 
one there. It was a large room, had three 
windows in front, blue window curtains which 
appeared to be of embossed cambric damask 
pattern, red silk fringe. The floor was covered 
with dark blue cloth, two little couches covered 
with blue patch, a small sideboard with I don't 
recollect what on it. 

*' In about two minutes the lady appeared, 
received us very agreeably, noticed the children 
much, inquired their names, because she told 
them she meant to be much acquainted with 
them. You could not but feel at your ease in 
her company. She was dressed in a white 



194 ROMANTIC DAYS 

cambric gown, buttoned all the way up in 
front, a little strip of work along the button- 
holes, but ruffled around the bottom. A peach- 
bloom-coloured silk scarf with a rich border over 
her shoulders by her sleeves. She had on a 
spencer of satin the same color, and likewise 
a turban of velour gauze, all of peach bloom. 
She looked very well indeed." 

Mrs. Crowninshield has also preserved for 
us a picture of Mrs. Madison at the New Year's 
Levee of 1816. " Such a crowd I never was in. 
It took ten minutes to push and shove ourselves 
through the dining-room; at the upper part 
of it stood the President and his lady, all stand- 
ing — and a continual moving in and out. 
Two other small parlours open and all full — 
likewise the entry. In every room was a table 
with wine punch and cakes and the servants 
squeezing through with waiters for those who 
could not get to the table. Some of the ladies 
were dressed very elegantly, beautiful bonnets 
and pelisses, shawls, etc. Mrs. Madison was 
dressed in a yellow satin, embroidered all over 
with sprigs of butterflies, not two alike in the 
dress; made high on the neck; a little cape, 
long sleeves, and a white bonnet with feathers. 
... At three it was all over and done. I was 
disappointed in my pelisse. First, it was made 
too short — it was then pieced down and the 
border quilted ; it really looked handsomer — 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 195 

but she charged ten dollars more than she en- 
gaged to make it for." 

Nothing in all Washington, indeed, appears 
to have made so great an impression upon 
Mrs. Crowninshield as Mrs. Madison's frocks. 
Sometimes the First Lady is in " sky blue 
striped velvet! " Again she is in black velvet 
with gold embroidery and a gorgeous turban. 
Womanlike, Mrs. Crowninshield herself began 
to long for more and handsomer gowns, remark- 
ing that she feared to be " taken for a piece 
of furniture " if she presented herself again at 
the Drawing Room in the same dress she had 
several times worn. Yet if the New England 
lady lacked the fine gowns of the Southern 
women she also lacked their unpleasant habit 
of taking snuff. "The first thing Mrs. Todd 
does on her coming in," she writes, " is to take 
from the shelf a tin box of snuff and pass it 
round. I keep this box handy as all the ladies 
take snuff, but I have not got in the fashion yet, 
nor I don't mean to learn any bad habits." 

One bad habit she did learn, though: she 
played cards for money! It happened in this 
wise. " Yesterday was delightful weather (Feb- 
ruary 23, 1816). . . . Went to the Navy Yard 
to see the monument and the ruins. Heard 
good music. Returned and walked the pave- 
ment till dinner time. It is paved in front of 
the seven buildings, so we go out of our houses, 



196 , ROMANTIC DAYS 

and sometimes we muster a large party if it 
is pleasant. Mrs. Madison and Mrs. Todd 
on one side and ]\Irs. Monroe's family on the 
other, and the ladies of our family, and we can 
always find gentlemen. They sit in the door- 
way reading papers. . . . Last evening I was at 
Mrs. Monroe's our neighbor — quite a large 
party. . . . We played loo and I won — I am 
afraid to say how much, but shall give it to the 
orphan asylum. I am going this morning to carry 
my winnings to Mrs. Madison." ^ For Mrs. 
Madison was a " directress " of the Washington 
Orphan Asylum. Her name may be found on 
its books for one year as the donor of twenty 
dollars and a cow ! She herself played for money 
early in her Washington career but she subse- 
quently gave up the practice and declared her- 
self sorry that she had ever indulged in it. 

In 1817 " Jemmy " Madison was succeeded 
by " Jemmy " Monroe. The journals of the 
day were wont to characterize the latter as 
" the last of the cocked hats," in recognition, 
doubtless, of the fact that Monroe was the last 
of the Presidents to adhere to the old-fashioned 
style of dress — dark blue coat, buff vest, doeskin 
buff-colored breeches, top boots and the mili- 
tary cocked hat of the Revolutionary era. 
Jefferson once remarked of Monroe that he was 
so perfectly honest that " if his soul were 

^ Letters of Mary Boardman Crowninshield, 1815-1816. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 197 

turned inside out, not a spot would be found 
on it." So noble a man was worthy of a noble 
wife, and such an one he found in Miss Eliza 
Kortwright of New York, a lady who appears 
to have possessed remarkable beauty as well 
as all the fine womanly graces. Inasmuch as 
she had been with her husband when he served 
his country as Minister to France she had the 
social gift also which residence abroad is likely 
to bestow. 

Of the two daughters who ofiiciated with her 
as ladies of the White House the elder, Eliza, 
had had the advantage of education under Ma- 
dame Campan in the celebrated school at St. 
Germain. The first really authenticated ap- 
pearance of this little girl, indeed, is in Madame 
Campan's Private Memoirs where she is men- 
tioned as walking with her father and teacher 
in the beautiful St. Germain's wood in the year 
1794, a very memorable year to ardent demo- 
crats like Madame Campan ^ and Mr. Monroe. 
Quite naturally they were talking of the advan- 
tages to be derived from life in a Republic — 
like America. Suddenly the little maiden by 
their side was discovered to be saying, " Yes, 
papa, but there are no streets in America like 
these," pointing out to the fine highways. 

1 The brother of Madame Campan, Citizen Genet, married 
Comeha Tappan CUnton (daughter of New York's governor), and 
fixed his residence here. 



198 ROMANTIC DAYS 

" Very true, my dear," replied the American 
Minister; " our nation may be compared to 
a newly -formed household — we are in want of 
many things. But we possess the finest thing 
of all — liberty." 

One of Eliza Monroe's friends at St. Germain 
was Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter 
of Josephine, and the attachment thus formed 
was never allowed to lapse. When the American 
girl grew up and married her first child was 
named Hortensia after the Queen of Holland, 
and there are still preserved in the family some 
charming letters sent by the famous French- 
woman at this time to the American whom she 
had come to love while both were Madame 
Campan's pupils. 

One of Mrs. Monroe's levees at the White 
House has been thus pictured by Mrs. Tuley, 
then of Virginia: ^ *' Mr. Monroe was standing 
near the door, and as we were introduced we 
had the honour of shaking hands with him and 
passing the usual congratulations of the season. 
My impressions of Mr. Monroe are very pleasing. 
He is tall and well formed. His dress was plain 
and in the old style, small clothes, silk hose, 
knee-buckles, and pumps fastened with buckles. 
His manner was quiet and dignified. . . . 

" We passed on and were presented to Mrs. 
Monroe and her two daughters, Mrs. Judge 

^ The entire letter was later reprinted in the Philadelphia Times. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 199 

Hay, and Mrs. Gouverneur, who stood by their 
mother and assisted her in receiving. Mrs. 
Monroe's manner is very gracious and she is a 
regal-looking lady. Her dress was superb black 
velvet; neck and arms bare and beautifully 
formed; her hair in puffs and dressed high on 
the head and ornamented with white ostrich 
plumes; around her neck an elegant pearl 
necklace. ... In Paris she was called ' la 
belle Americaine.' 

" Mrs. Judge Hay (the President's eldest 
daughter) is very handsome also — tall and 
graceful, and, I hear, very accomplished . . . 
her dress was crimson velvet, gold cord and 
tassel round the waist, white plumes in the hair, 
handsome jewelry, bare neck and arms. The 
other daughter, Mrs. Gouverneur, is also very 
handsome — dress, rich white satin, trimmed 
with a great deal of blonde lace, embroidered 
with silver thread, bare neck and arms, pearl 
jewelry and white plumes in the hair. By the 
by, plumes in the hair seem to be the most 
fashionable style of head dress for married ladies. 

" All the lower rooms were opened, and 
though well filled, not uncomfortably so. The 
rooms were warmed by great fires of hickory 
wood in the large open fire-places, and with the 
handsome brass andirons and fenders quite re- 
mind me of our grand old wood fires in Virginia. 
Wine was handed about in wine-glasses on large 



200 ROMANTIC DAYS 

silver salvers by coloured waiters, dressed in 
dark livery, gilt buttons etc. I suppose some 
of them must have come from Mr. Monroe's 
old family seat, ' Oak Hill ' Virginia." 

Another woman letter-writer of this period 
has recorded that the President's wife " is 
certainly the Ninon of the day and looks more 
beautiful than any woman of her age I ever saw. 
She did the honours of the White House with 
perfect simplicity." But though Mrs. Monroe 
did these honors well she did not do them often. 
She had lived in Washington long enough and 
had seen enough of the social life of the last 
administration to realize that White House 
entertaining could no longer be conducted on the 
generous lines established by Mrs. Madison. 
Very soon after her husband came into oflSce, 
therefore, she made her position in this matter 
known. Mrs. Seaton writes (in 1818) : " It is said 
that the dinner-parties of Mrs. Monroe will be 
very select. Mrs. Hay returned the visits paid 
to her mother, making assurances, in the most 
pointedly polite manner, that Mrs. Monroe 
will be happy to see her friends morning or 
evening, but that her health is totally inade- 
quate to visiting at present! Mrs. Hay is 
understood to be her proxy." In order to make 
quite clear the position of the latest First Lady 
in this matter of calls John Quincy Adams, 
then Secretary of State, drew up a code of 




MRS. JAMES MONROE. 
From the miniature pai ntid by Sene in Paris in 1794. 




JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 
From the portrait by Leslie in the possession of Brooks Adams, Quincy, Massachusetts. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 201 

social etiquette, very similar to that formerly 
used by President Washington and so practical, 
from the official standpoint, that with a few 
modifications it has sufficed, ever since, to 
regulate social life in the capital. 

As might be expected Mrs. Monroe's recep- 
tions were the more highly regarded just be- 
cause they were infrequent. Phoebe Morris, 
writing to Mrs. Madison, January 19, 1824 
says, " Mrs. Monroe is really going to have a 
Drawing Room on Wednesday. You have no 
doubt seen the description of Mrs. Hay's 
personal elegance of deportment and costume 
in the papers. We all attended Mrs. Adams's 
reception on the 8th, and it was really a very 
brilliant party, and admirably well arranged. 
The ladies climbed the chairs and benches to 
see General Jackson [Jackson and John Quincy 
Adams were rival candidates for the Presidency 
at this time] and Mrs. Adams very gracefully 
took his arm . and walked through the apart- 
ments with him, which gratified the general 
curiosity." 

But though Jackson, as *' Hero of New Or- 
leans," was so eagerly stared at on this occasion, 
it was John Quincy Adams and not he whom the 
people chose the following year to be head of the 
nation. No more patriotic and honorable man 
ever lived than this sixth President of the United 
States. x\nd no public officer has ever been so 



202 ROMANTIC DAYS 

little understood. Austere and utterly lacking 
at first acquaintance in genial human qualities 
he repelled most persons who came in contact 
with him. He knew this, too, and once remarked 
humorously that his excellent mother's dictum 
that " children should be seen and not heard " 
had wrought his social ruin. In a previous book 
of mine ^ I have quoted a youthful letter of 
Quincy Adams's in which he complained that 
too many of the Boston belles, encountered 
during a gay visit to that city, were " like a 
beautiful apple that is insipid to the taste." 
He had no mind to choose such an one for a 
wife. The woman he married has, on the con- 
trary, been characterized as the most scholarly ^ 
who ever presided over the White House. 
Born, educated and married in London, where 
her father was first American consul, Louisa 
Catherine Johnson added to the social grace com- 
mon to those bred up in courts very real culture 
and a deep love of domestic life. She and her hus- 
band were perfectly congenial, for she well knew 
that the man's heart was of gold and strove ever 
to help him make the best of himself to the out- 
side world. Necessarily, though, her husband's 
manner of life considerably affected the social 
functions over which it was her duty to preside. 

^ See Old Boston Days and Ways, p. 401. 

2 She was wont to read Plato in the intervals of social and domes- 
tic duties! 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 203 

For instance: White House receptions had to 
break up well before ten o'clock in order that 
the President might get to bed early! He had 
to be up betimes; in winter at five, that he 
might go abroad for a two hours walk under the 
light of the moon and stars, nearly always re- 
turning in time to see the sun rise from his 
favorite eastern window. Then he made his 
own fire and sat down to read three chapters 
of the Bible with the accompaniment of various 
commentaries before breakfast. On summer 
mornings a swim in the Potomac took the place 
of the walk, the President, who was a strong 
swimmer, often remaining in the water two hours 
or more. But he characteristically takes him- 
self to task in his Diary for thus indulging in 
swimming — merely that he might show of 
what feats he was capable! 

Early rising was the only excess, however, in 
w^hich President Adams indulged. The same 
thing was true of President Quincy of Harvard, 
and both gentlemen were therefore likely to 
take gentle little cat-naps whenever they were 
seated quietly anywhere for ten minutes at 
a time. One day, we are told, they went to- 
gether into Judge Story's lecture-room to hear 
that distinguished jurist read his lecture to a 
law school class. The Judge received the vis- 
itors with his usual politeness, placed them on the 
platform by his side, in full view of the class. 



204 ROMANTIC DAYS 

and then went on with his talk. In a very few 
minutes both Presidents were fast asleep! The 
Judge paused a moment, then, pointing to the 
sleeping dignitaries, said, " Gentlemen, you see 
before you a melancholy example of the evil 
effects of early rising." This remark was fol- 
lowed by a shout of laughter which, of course j 
at once aroused the visitors from their slumbers. 
A kinsman of these early risers, Josiah Quincy 
of Boston, has left us perhaps the best picture 
that we have of Washington society at just 
this time. To the dinners of the day considerable 
space is given ^ particularly to one dinner which 
he enjoyed in the home of Daniel Webster, then 
a member of the House and just coming into 
his own as a figure of national importance. 
The beautiful affection which existed between 
Webster and his wife made an especially deep 
impression upon young Quincy, then himself 
but five years out of college and with a keen 
eye for such relationships. " It was like organ 
music," he says, " to hear Webster speak to 
or of the being upon whom his affections re- 
posed, and whom, alas ! he was so soon to lose. 
I am sure that those who knew the man only 
when this tenderest relation had been terminated 
by death, never knew him in his perfect sym- 
metry. Whatever evil-speakers may choose 
to say about the subsequent career of Daniel 

1 In Figures of the Past, by Josiah Quincy. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 205 

Webster, he was at that time ' whole as the 
marble, founded as the rock.' " Mr. Quincy also 
enjoyed the hospitality of the Vice-President, 
who " contrary to custom, had come up to the 
capital and was actually doing the work of his 
place. The usage had been for the holders of 
this office to stay quietly at home, draw their 
salaries and allow some senator to preside in the 
upper house." 

Miss Calhoun, the Vice-President's daughter, 
delighted young Quincy by her intelligent 
grasp on the political situation. *' I well re- 
member," he says, " the clearness with which 
she presented the Southern view and the in- 
genuity with which she parried such objections 
as I was able to present. The fashionable ladies 
of the South had received the education of 
political thought and discussion to a degree 
unknown among their sisters of the North. 
' She can read bad French and play a few tunes 
upon the piano,' said a cynical friend of mine 
concerning a young lady who had completed 
the costly education of a fashionable school 
in New York, * but upon my word she does not 
know whether she is living in a monarchy or 
a republic' The sneer would never have been 
applied to the corresponding class at the South. 
These ladies were conversant with political 
theories, and held definite political opinions." 

The social features of Washington at the 



206 ROMANTIC DAYS 

time of this visit, were evening parties. " The 
company assembled about eight," our author 
tells us, " and began to break up shortly before 
eleven, having enjoyed the recreation of dancing, 
card-playing, music or conversation. Every- 
body in the city who occupied the necessary 
social position appeared at these gatherings; 
and being at the age when the tinsel of Vanity 
Fair is at its full glitter, I enjoyed them highly. 
My first Washington party was at Mrs. Wirt's, 
where I was taken as a stranger by Mr. and 
Mrs. Webster. ... 1 was there presented to 
a lady whose beauty was the admiration of 
Washington and whose name was, consequently, 
upon every tongue, — at least something like 
her name; for society had decreed that this 
fair woman should be known as Mrs. Florida 
White, her husband being a delegate from our 
most southern territory. Very splendid in her 
beauty was Mrs. White." This Mrs. White 
it was who was afterwards known in Paris as 
" la belle sauvage " by reason of an incident 
which amusingly illustrates the dense ignorance 
which then obtained in France concerning Am- 
erican life and customs. A fancy dress ball 
was to be given by one of the members of the 
Bonaparte family and, on receiving her invita- 
tion, Mrs. White asked her hostess what she 
should wear. " An American costume, of 
course," was the prompt reply. " But," said 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 207 

Mrs. White, " we have no original American 
costumes; we follow your fashions." The 
Frenchwoman was not to be convinced, how- 
ever, that natives of Kentucky (Mrs. White's 
birthplace) were not, when at home, arrayed 
as are the Indians and so, accepting the hint, 
Mrs. White appeared at the ball as an Indian 
girl, gay with beads and feathers, a quiver at 
her back and a bow in her hand. Mrs. Edward 
Livingston and her charming daughter. Miss 
Cora Livingston, were other women whom the 
visitor from Massachusetts met and admired 
at Mrs. Wirt's party. Of Mrs. Livingston we 
shall hear more when we come to the New 
Orleans chapter. SuflBce it here to say that her 
Washington salon at this time was no less famous 
than the one she had previously conducted 
in the chief city of Louisiana. 

Watching Washington's first waltz was an- 
other of Josiah Quincy's delectable experiences 
during this visit to the capital in 1826. The 
scene was a " public ball " and the chief per- 
former Baron Stackelburg, " who whirled 
through the mazes of this dance with a huge 
pair of dragoon spurs bound to his heels. The 
danger^of interfering with the other dancers, 
which seemed always imminent, was skilfully 
avoided by the Baron, who received a murmur 
of appreciative applause as he led his partner 
to her seat. The question of the decorum of 



208 ROMANTIC DAYS 

this strange dance was distinctly raised upon 
its first appearance, and it was nearly twenty- 
five years later before remonstrances ceased 
to be heard. How far the waltz and its suc- 
cessors of a similar character may be compatible 
with feminine modesty is a question which 
need not here, be discussed. It is sufficient to 
say that, socially speaking, it has proved an 
unmitigated nuisance. It has utterly routed 
the intellectual element that was once conspic- 
uous even in fashionable gatherings. It has 
not only given society over to the young and 
inexperienced, but, by a perverse process of 
unnatural selection, it has pushed to the front 
by no means the best specimens of these." 

Mr. Quincy on the evils of the waltz is much 
less vital and suggestive than Mr. Quincy on 
the evils cf aristocratic government, however. 
So I want to turn back to his dinner at the Cal- 
houns' and to some conversation which there 
went on. " Mr. Calhoun, with the fore sight 
of a politician," we are told, *' was accustomed 
to make himself agreeable to young men ap- 
pearing in Washington who might possibly 
rise to influence in their respective communities. 
It was probably with a view to such a contin- 
gency that he favoured me with a long disserta- 
tion upon public affairs. He never alluded 
to the subject of slavery though it was easy 
to see that reference to this interest shaped 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 209 

his opinions about tariff, State rights, internal 
improvements, and other questions, with which, 
on the surface, it had small connection. The 
concluding words of this aggressive Democrat 
made an ineffaceable impression upon my mind. 
They were pronounced in a subdued tone of 
esoteric confidence, such as an ancient augur 
might have used to a neophyte in his profession. 
Substantially they were these: ' Now, from 
what I have said to you, I think you will see 
that the interests of the gentlemen of the North 
and those of the South are identical,' I can 
quote no utterance more characteristic of the 
political Washington of twenty-six than this. 
The inference was that the ' glittering general- 
izations ' of the Declaration were never meant 
to be taken seriously. Gentlemen were the natural 
rulers of America, after all. It has taken all 
the succeeding half-century to reach a vital 
belief that the people and not gentlemen (using 
the word, of course, in its common and narrow 
sense) are to govern this country. It will take 
much more than another half-century before 
the necessary and (in the end) beneficent con- 
sequences of this truth shall be fully realized." 

Already, however, the issue between " gentle- 
men " and " the people " had come to be a 
clear-cut one in Washington. As the four years 
term of John Quincy iVdams drew to a close 
the opposition which had long been felt towards 



210 ROMANTIC DAYS 

him grew very bitter and very vocal. Because 
he was cold and reserved he was charged with 
being a monarchist and an aristocrat. It was 
further alleged against him : that he had married 
an English woman; that he was rich, and that 
he had received large sums of public money, 
some of which he had spent in installing a 
billiard room in the White House (!). Against 
Andrew Jackson plenty of half-true things were 
also urged but the " Hero of New Orleans " 
was the people's choice nevertheless, so that we 
find the second Adams solemnly recording in 
his diary, almost as his mother had done thirty 
years before, when to his father, also, had been 
denied the honor of a second term, " The places 
that have known us shall know us no more." 

Yet Mrs. Adams went out, as she had come 
in, with impressive social grace. At her last 
Drawing Room the great audience chamber, 
never before opened and then only just finished, 
was thrown open for dancing, sl thing unheard 
of before at a Drawing Room. 

In strange contrast with the dignity of pre- 
vious Presidential inaugurations was that of 
Andrew Jackson, if we may trust contemporary 
reports. " When the President's address was 
concluded," says Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith, ^ 

1 Mrs. Smith was the wife of the editor of the National Intelligencer, 
which conservative organ necessarily disapproved of the " People " 
and the " People's President." 




MRS. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 
From the portrait by Leslie in the possession of Brooks Adams, Quincy, Massachusetts. 



^ I*' X. 




IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 211 

" the barricades gave way before the multitude, 
who forced a passage to shake hands with the 
choice of the people. General Jackson mounted* 
his horse, having walked to the Capitol, and then 
such a cortege followed! Countrymen, laborers, 
white and black, — carriages, wagons, and carts, 
all pursuing him to the President's house. . . . 
The closing scene was in disgusting contrast 
with the simplicity of the impressive drama 
of the inaugural oath! The President was 
literally pursued by a motley concourse of 
people, riding, running, helter-skelter, striving 
who should first gain admittance into the Exec- 
utive Mansion, where it was understood that 
refreshments were to be distributed. The halls 
were filled with a disorderly rabble of negroes, 
boys, women, and children scrambling for the 
refreshments designed for the drawing-rooms, 
the people forcing their way into the saloons, 
mingling with the foreigners and citizens sur- 
rounding the President. . . . China and glass 
to the amount of several thousand dollars were 
broken in the struggle to get at the ices and 
cakes, though punch and other drinkables 
had been carried out in tubs and buckets to 
the people; but had it been in hogsheads it 
would have been insufiicient besides unsatis- 
factory to the mob, who claimed equality in all 
things. . . . The confusion became more and 
more appalling. At one moment the President, 



212 ROMANTIC DAYS 

who had retreated until he was pressed against 
the wall of the apartment, could only be se- 
cured against serious danger by a number of 
gentlemen linking arms and forming themselves 
into a barrier. It was then that the windows 
were thrown open and the living torrent found 
an outlet. ... It was the People's day, the 
People's President and the People would rule." 
What manner of man was this " People's 
President? " The answers which the contempo- 
rary documents of Jackson's day give to this 
query depend altogether upon the inherited prej- 
udices and political bias of their respective 
writers. Josiah Quincy suggests that there were 
two Andrew Jacksons, one the person whom 
he himself attempted to describe, the other 
" the Jackson of comic myth." That the com- 
posite Jackson had in him, however, much that 
was admirable one is forced to admit after read- 
ing the following from the pen of a writer who, 
by birth and training, was little predisposed to 
be favorably impressed by the newcomer at the 
White House. " Although I have only a holiday 
acquaintance with the General," wrote Mr. 
Quincy, " and although a man certainly puts 
on his best manners when undergoing a public 
reception, the fact was borne in upon me that 
the seventh President was, in essence, a knightly 
personage, — prejudiced, narrow, mistaken upon 
many points, it might be, but vigorously a 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 213 

gentleman in his high sense of honor and in the 
natural straightforward courtesies which are 
easily to be distinguished from the veneer of 
policy." 

Jackson was the first President to lack the 
advantage of early association with those to 
whom the amenities of life mean much. By 
the time he was twenty-one he had worked at 
the saddler's trade, taught school, been clerk 
in a store, served as constable, studied law and 
got a lawyer's license. His boyhood days were 
passed in a Carolina pine-woods where, as Parton 
says, " he learned to read, to write, to cast ac- 
counts — little more. . . . He was never a well- 
informed man. He never was addicted to 
books. He never learned to write the English 
language correctly, though he often wrote it 
eloquently and vigorously." A man's man, 
with a life full, in its early years, of betting, 
racing, cock-fighting, and carousing, Jackson 
supplies a striking example of a character com- 
pletely transformed by tender, passionate love 
for a good woman. So much did this woman 
mean to him, indeed, that he made many griev- 
ous mistakes in judgment, after he had been 
elected to the presidency, out of sheer chival- 
rous regard for her sainted memory and for 
what she had suffered in life. 

Mrs. Jackson never coveted a place in the 
White House. When the news of the General's 



214 ROMANTIC DAYS 

election reached her, in her Tennessee home, she 
said, " Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake, I'm glad; 
for my own sake I never wished it." She had 
not been happy in Washington when her hus- 
band was senator there. For a time, indeed, it 
seemed doubtful if any of the society leaders 
of the day would call on her! The reason for 
this hesitation lay in the fact that legally, the 
General's " Rachel " as he called her, had not 
been free of her first husband when her second 
took her to wife. That this was the fault of 
neither but was rather blamable to the loose 
divorce laws of the time is quite true but it is 
plain, none the less, as Sumner points out, 
" that Jackson himself was to blame for con- 
tracting a marriage under ambiguous circum- 
stances, and for not protecting his wife's honour 
by precautions, such as finding out the exact 
terms of the act of the Legislature of Virginia. 
Having put her in a false position, against which, 
as a man and a lawyer, he should have protected 
her, he was afterwards led, by his education and 
the current ways of thinking in the society 
about him, to try to treat the defects of his 
marriage certificate by shooting any man who 
dared to state the truth, that said certificate 
was irregular. The circumstances of the mar- 
riage were such as to provoke scandal at the 
time, and this scandal, which in the case of a 
more obscure man would have died out during 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 215 

thirty years of honourable wedlock, came up 
over and over again during Jackson's career." 

The bare facts of the case are that Jackson, 
when a young man, had settled in West Tennes- 
see and was taken to board by Mrs. Donelson, 
the mother of Mrs. Lewis Robards. Robards 
mistreated his wife and, on one occasion, Jack- 
son, roused beyond self-control as he witnessed 
the man's brutality, said with that straight- 
forwardness and utter want of tact which ever 
marked his course, '* If I had such a wife I 
would not willingly bring a tear to her beautiful 
eyes." To which Robards wrathfully retorted, 
" Well, perhaps it is a mistake, but she is not 
your wife." From that time on jealousy mingled 
with cruelty in the husband's treatment and 
things became so bad that Mrs. Robards was 
urged by her mother and her friends to desert 
the man. This she ultimately did by journeying 
from Nashville to Natchez under the protection 
of a little party of gentlemen of whom Jackson 
was one. Recent Indian disturbances in the 
country through which they were to pass had 
rendered a considerable escort necessary and 
Jackson, because of his strong right arm, had 
been urged by Colonel Stark, an old friend of 
the Donelsons, to be of the party. 

Soon after this the young lawyer learned that 
Robards had applied for a divorce from his 
wife, and, without waiting to assure himself 



216 ROMANTIC DAYS 

that it had been granted, he asked Mrs. Donel- 
son for permission to marry her daughter. " Mr. 
Jackson," this good woman queried, " would 
you sacrifice your Ufe to save my child's good 
name? " " Ten thousand lives, madam, if I 
had them," the youth replied with fervor. 
And he meant it, too. From the time of their 
marriage, in the summer of 1791, until his wife's 
death, the year he was made President, Jack- 
son showed himself always a tender lover and, 
on more than one occasion, faced death at the 
hands of an enemy because of slurring things 
which had been said of the woman he adored. 
He could fight for her but she could only die for 
him. The story goes that, soon after the elec- 
tion, being in Nashville on a shopping expedition, 
she found herself very weary and went to the 
principal inn of the place to rest before starting 
on the twelve-mile ride to the Hermitage. 
There, while reclining on a sofa in the back parlor, 
she overheard through the closed folding-doors 
some of the cruel slanders of her which had been 
current campaign gossip, set off by ugly sug- 
gestions as to the possibility of getting rid of 
her and sarcastic references to the load the Gen- 
eral would have to carry if he brought such a 
wife to the White House. All through the long 
drive home the cruel words kept ringing in her 
ears and when her husband met her at Stone's 
River, after his custom, he noticed that she 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 217 

looked worn and unhappy. " What is the matter, 
my love? " he inquired anxiously, but could 
draw nothing from her. To her niece, however, 
she confided what had occurred, adding that 
she felt sure that what the gossips had said was 
true, that she would be of no advantage to her 
husband in the White House and that she did 
not wish to go there and disgrace him. Never 
the same woman after that day at Nashville, 
she grew more and more feeble as the time for 
her husband's departure drew near, and almost 
on its eve she slipped quietly into the great 
Beyond. 

Jackson's grief was terrible. Nor was he 
ever quite the same man afterwards. And his 
wrath against gossip and gossipers was simply 
unbounded. When asked on his death-bed 
if he forgave his enemies, he replied, " All ex- 
cept those who slandered my Rachel to death." 

Only in the light of his poignant sorrow, 
which he felt to be distinctly chargeable to 
slander, can we at all understand the extreme 
position President Jackson took in the famous 
affair of Mrs. Eaton and the Cabinet ladies. 
Mrs. Eaton, born Peggy O'Neal, was the daugh- 
ter of a Washington tavern-keeper, at whose com- 
fortable old-fashioned house many members of 
Congress boarded while in the Federal City. 
Major Eaton, Senator from Tennessee, had lived 
at this house for ten years and had seen pretty. 



218 ROMANTIC DAYS 

saucy Peggy grow up, become the wife of 
Purser Timberlake of the United States Navy 
and the mother of two children. The year be- 
fore Jackson became President Timberlake had 
committed suicide in a fit of despondency 
induced, it was said, by previous intoxication. 
He had been on duty in the Mediterranean 
at the time and Mrs. Timberlake had not been 
with him. Washington had continued to be her 
home after her marriage as before. Thus, when 
the death of her husband left her free to enter- 
tain other marriage proposals, it was not diflfi- 
cult for Major Eaton, who had long admired her 
(and with whom, indeed, her name had on 
various occasions been suggestively linked), to 
ask her to become his wife. They were married 
in January, 1829, just a few weeks before Gen- 
eral Jackson arrived at the seat of government.^ 
All of which might have been well enough had 
not Major Eaton been appointed Secretary of 
War and had not President Jackson decreed 
that to Mrs. Eaton, as to the wives of other 
Cabinet members, all honor and respect should 
be accorded. " The spiteful cats who plagued 
the life out of my patient Rachel shall not 
scratch this brave little Peggy!" he swore; 
and he refused to be moved by the story that 

^ " General Jackson's enemies laugh and divert themselves with 
the idea of what a suitable lady in waiting Mrs. Eaton will make to 
Mrs. Jackson," wrote Mrs. Smith at the time. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 219 

Mrs. Eaton had borne a bad reputation in 
Washington from her girlhood; that she had 
herself instructed the servants to call her chil- 
dren Eaton and not Timberlake on the ground 
that that was their rightful name; that Eaton 
and Mrs. Timberlake had often traveled to- 
gether as husband and wife etc. etc. etc. Andrew 
Jackson honestly considered this case to be 
parallel with his dear dead Rachel's and for 
him that was enough. 

Mrs. Calhoun, however, positively refused to 
receive Mrs. Eaton, and thus the strained re- 
lations already existing between the President 
and Mr. Calhoun were increased. The Sec- 
retary of State, Mr. Van Buren, however, being 
a widower and anxious to oblige his chief, ar- 
ranged that the fair Peggy be made guest of 
honor at some dancing parties in which he per- 
suaded two legation bachelors to join him as 
hosts, and for a little while it looked as if the 
lady might be launched in spite of everything. 
Imagine, therefore, the consternation of these 
complaisant gentlemen when they beheld sub- 
stantial Cabinet dames float away and vanish 
into thin air upon the approach of the radiant 
and faultlessly attired Mrs. Eaton while cotillion 
after cotillion dissolved into its original elements 
when she was given the place at its head. At 
a very elegant ball, given by the Russian Min- 
ister, (another bachelor), Mrs. Huygens, wife 



220 ROMANTIC DAYS 

of the Dutch Minister, when confronted with 
the alternative of sitting next to Mrs. Eaton, 
who had been placed at head of the supper table, 
or leaving the room, chose the latter course and 
with great dignity withdrew upon the arm of 
her husband. It was for this offence that the 
President threatened to send the minister home. 

He even sent his beloved niece, Mrs. Donelson, 
home when she refused to bend to his will in 
this matter! Though compelled, as mistress 
of the White House, to receive Mrs. Eaton, she 
absolutely refused to visit her. " Anything else, 
uncle, I will do for you," she declared, " but 
not that." " Then go back to Tennessee, my 
dear," replied the President. And back to 
Tennessee she went, her husband, who had been 
the General's private secretary, of course going 
with her. Happily, they were both persuaded 
to return, after an absence of six months, by 
the interposition of friends. 

Meanwhile the lady who was the cause of all 
this trouble enjoyed herself to the utmost, 
frequently entertaining her zealous champions 
by enacting for them, in the privacy of her home, 
little scenes from this extraordinary *' Bataille 
de Dames." Finally her husband cut the Gor- 
dian knot by resigning as a Cabinet officer. The 
President soon after appointed him governor 
of the recently acquired Territory of Florida, 
from which post he was ere long advanced to the 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 221 

position of Minister to Spain. At the court of 
Madrid Mrs. Eaton spent the happiest years she 
had ever known. General Eaton died in 1859 
and his widow, who still retained much of her 
remarkable beauty, eloped not long afterward 
with an Italian adventurer who taught dancing 
at Marini's in Washington. That the lady's 
money and jewels were the real source of at- 
traction in this case was soon proved by the fact 
that, after a brief interval, the dancing-master 
retired from the scene accompanied by the pretty 
young granddaughter of his elderly consort.^ 

Having now depicted President Jackson at 
his worst, having shown him as the protagonist 
of an exceedingly squalid drama, a drama in 
which his native obstinacy appears at its very 
crudest, let us turn and take a glimpse of him at 
his best — at home among the little children 
whom he so dearly loved. The time is in the eve- 
ning after the day's work is over and the scene 
" a large parlour, scantily furnished, lighted from 
above by a chandelier; a bright blazing fire 
in the grate; around the fire four or five ladies 
sewing, say Mrs. Donelson, Mrs. Andrew Jack- 
son [wife of Jackson's adopted son], Mrs. Ed- 
ward Livingston and another one or two; five 
or six children from two to seven years of age, 

* Mrs. Eaton then divorced the rascally foreigner. She survived 
until 1879, obviously enjoying herself to the end, inasmuch as her 
last words are said to have been, " I am not afraid to go — but this 
is such a beautiful world! " 



222 ROMANTIC DAYS 

playing about the room, too, regardless of doc- 
uments and work-baskets. At a distant end 
of the apartment the President, seated in an 
arm-chair, wearing a long loose coat, smoking 
a long reed pipe, with a red clay bowl, exhibiting 
the combined dignity of a patriarch, a monarch 
and an Indian chief. A little behind the Presi- 
dent, Edward Livingston, Secretary of State, 
reading to him, in a low tone, a dispatch from 
the French Minister for Foreign Affairs. The 
President listens intently yet with a certain 
bland assurance, as though he were saying to 
himself, ' Say you so. Monsieur.'^ We shall see 
about that.' The ladies glance toward him now 
and then, with fond admiration expressed in 
their countenances. The children are too loud 
occasionally in their play. The President in- 
clines his ear closer to the Secretary, and waves 
his pipe absently, but with an exquisite, smiling 
tenderness toward the noisy group, which, Mrs. 
Donelson perceiving, she lifts her finger, and 
whispers admonition." 

Mrs. TroUope, who never gave a more favor- 
able picture of any American than she felt 
absolutely obliged to do, describes impressively 
a visit made by Jackson to Cincinnati soon after 
his election to the Presidency. " More than one 
private carriage," she says, " was stationed at 
the water's edge to await the general's orders, 
but they were dismissed upon the information 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 223 

that he would walk to the hotel. Upon receiving 
this information the silent crowd divided itself 
in a very orderly manner, leaving a space for 
him to walk through them. He did so, uncovered, 
though the distance was considerable and the 
weather very cold; but he alone (with the ex- 
ception of a few European gentlemen who were 
present) was without a hat.^ He wore his gray 
hair carelessly, but not ungracefully arranged, 
and spite of his harsh gaunt features, he looked 
like a gentleman and a soldier. He was in deep 
mourning having very recently lost his wife ; they 
were said to have been very happy together.^ " 

^ There is considerable evidence that Jackson, in spite of his raga- 
muffin boyhood, had a finer feehng for the etiquette of the hat than 
most American men of his time. One of the old slaves on his plan- 
tation told a visitor who was making inquiries about the life which 
Jackson there led with his wife that the General, after Mrs. Jack- 
son's death, was wont to visit some trees he and his Rachel had 
planted together and, upon leaving them, " would take off his hat, 
just like they ivas a lady! " 

^ So happy that never a day passed without the General's remem- 
bering with thanksgiving to God all that she had meant to him. 
N. P. Trist, who became Jackson's private secretary early in the 
Presidency, tells of going to the General's room one night after he 
had retired and says: " I found Jackson sitting at a little table, 
with his wife's miniature, a very large one, before him propped up 
against some books and between him and the picture an open book 
which bore the mark of long use. This book was her Prayer-Book. 
The miniature he always wore next to his heart, suspended around 
his neck by a strong black cord. The last thing he did every night 
before going to rest was to read in that book with that picture before 
his eyes." This miniature was done in 1819 (when Mrs. Jackson 
was 32) by Anna C. Peale. The gown is that which the General's 
wife wore at the ball given him in New Orleans before his departure, 
alter the victory of January 8. 



224 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Plenty of other contemporary chroniclers, to 
be sure, can be found who will present a much 
less pleasing picture of this extraordinary man. 
In those days no domestic scene was too intimate 
and no social function too impressive to lack 
its " chiel amang them takin' notes." And al- 
ways the notes were printed. There were ardent 
Jackson sheets and virulent Anti-Jackson sheets, 
the Globe being the best representative of the 
former and the Intelligencer of the latter. 
Jefferson ^ had been the godfather of this 
" National Smoothing-plane," as the Federalists 
dubbed it, and Samuel Harrison Smith, other- 
wise, " Silky Milky Smith," its first editor. The 
obtuse quality of the paper and its ownership 
may be gathered from the fact that, when its 
proprietor, the elder Gales, sat to Charles King 
to have his portrait painted, — insisting that 
a copy of the Intelligencer be shown in his hand, 
— he quite failed to perceive that, by displaying 
the words " Dry Goods " very legibly at the 
top of the page as though at the head of the 
advertising columns, the painter was taking his 
revenge ! 

Solid columns of advertising on the front 
pages and inside fulsome praise for all whose 
favor was worth currying characterized this 

^ Yet it appears that news in which Jefferson was deeply interested 
continued to reach his South-Land very slowly. It took Kentucky 
from November, 1812, until the following February to learn of Madi- 
son's election! 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 225 

paper during Jackson's time. Notices of " blush- 
ing virgins " who had been seUing for the benefit 
of helpless orphans " the goods their own fair 
fingers had made " abound. No wonder the 
paper failed to satisfy the ardent temperament 
of Jackson. He desired a vigorous and dominant 
organ that should announce his "policies"; 
and with this end in view he brought on from 
Kentucky Frank Blair, who founded the Globe 
and soon made himself and his co-workers a 
power in Washington. In its issue of April 20, 
1831, the Globe editorially, and quite frankly, 
may be found declaring that " it will be devoted 
in the future as it has been hitherto to the 
discussion and maintenance of the principles 
which brought General Jackson into oflSce." 
The same issue states that it will also advocate 
a second term for Jackson — this in spite of 
the fact that he was then only half through his 
first term. 

But if the people of Washington were in dead 
earnest at this time over their politics they were 
touchingly naive concerning their amusements. 
The same issue of the Globe which has been al- 
ready cited advertises a show whose chief 
features are the " Great Anaconda of Java" 
and the " Boa Constrictors of Ceylon " both 
of which are declared to be " so docile that 
the most timid lady or child may view them with 
safety and pleasure." There was very little 



226 ROMANTIC DAYS 

else to " view " in the Washington of tliose days. 
When a Philadelphia company stopped on its 
way to Savannah there was good drama in the 
United States Theatre, the first playhouse of 
the city, or the Washington Theatre, opened 
in 1820. In the latter house appeared in the 
course of the years the elder Booth, Macready 
and Thomas Apthorpe Cooper. It is interesting 
to note, in passing, that to Cooper's Virginius 
his young daughter, who afterwards married 
Robert Tyler and during a portion of the four- 
teenth administration presided over the White 
House, at this time played Virginia. 

Horse-racing was the chief amusement, even 
the fashionables joining with zest in this diver- 
sion. Mrs. Seaton gives a lively description 
of a race she witnessed in October, 1812, and Dr. 
Cutler thus describes the institution of the 
race-course as he saw it in 1803. " The race- 
ground is an old field with something of a rising 
in the centre. The race path is made about 
fifty feet wide, measuring just one mile from the 
bench of the judges round to the stage again. 
In the centre of this circle a prodigious number 
of booths are erected, which stand upon the 
highest part of the ground. Under them are 
tables spread much like the booths at Commence- 
ment (at Cambridge), but on the top, for they 
are all built of boards on platforms to accommo- 
date spectators. At the time of the racing these 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 227 

are filled with persons of all descriptions. On 
the western side and without the circle is rising 
ground, where the carriages of the most respect- 
able people take their stand. These, if they were 
not all Democrats, I should call the noblesse. 
Their carriages are elegant, and their attendants 
and servants numerous. They are from dif- 
ferent parts of the Southern and Middle states 
and filled principally with ladies, and about 
one hundred in number. . . . While the horses 
were running the whole ground within the circle 
was spread over with people on horseback 
stretching round full speed to different parts 
of the circle to see the race. This was a striking 
part of the show, for it was supposed there were 
about 800 on horseback, and many of them 
mounted on excellent horses. There were about 
200 carriages and between 3000 and 4000 people 
— black and white and yellow; of all condi- 
tions from the President of the United States 
to the beggar in his rags; of all ages and of 
both sexes, for I should judge one-third were 
females." 

Another writer, Warden, tells us that " women 
in the territory of Columbia have no reason to 
complain of the degradation to which they are 
exposed by the tyrant man. Free and innocent, 
they go where they please, both before and after 
marriage and have no need to have recourse 
to dissimulation and cunning for their own re- 



228 ROMANTIC DAYS 

pose and that of their husbands." This same 
writer also mentions a number of " pecuHar 
customs," of which the following are some: 
*' Both sexes, whether on horseback or on foot, 
wear an umbrella in all seasons; in summer, to 
keep off the sunbeams, in winter as a shelter from 
the rain and snow; in spring and autumn to 
intercept the dews of the evening. Persons of 
all ranks canter their horses, which movement 
fatigues the animal, and has an ungraceful ap- 
pearance. 

" Boarders in boarding-houses, or in taverns," 
this entertaining chronicler further records, 
" sometimes throw off the coat during the heat 
of summer; and in winter, the shoes, for the 
purpose of warming the feet at the fire — cus- 
toms which the climate only can excuse." 

In a curious little book, Description of Eti- 
quette at Washington City, by E. Cooley, M. D., 
which appears to have been published in 
Philadelphia in 1830, there are printed detailed 
rules for the proper conduct of visitors to Wash- 
ington! Here we learn that from noon until 
dinner time at four o'clock is the proper time 
for making morning calls; that ladies, when at- 
tending sessions of the Supreme Court, go in, 
" resting on the left arm " of the gentleman 
who is acting as their escort; that it is " quite 
uncommon to see a gentleman and lady walk 
out together without her resting on the gentle- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 229 

man's arm — unless they are fresh arrivals "; 
and that on Sunday the streets are left almost 
entirely to the colored people, " who dress them- 
selves very fine, male and female, and walk out 
arm in arm, in imitation of the white belles and 
beaux." In odd juxtaposition with these coun- 
sels of frivolity Dr. Cooley prints the Declara- 
tion of Independence and the Constitution of 
the United States. 

Foreign visitors, especially those of high 
literary reputation, were immensely " lionized " 
in the Washington of the middle thirties, even 
such sensible women as Mrs. Samuel Harrison 
Smith putting themselves to great trouble and 
expense for the sake of " doing the proper thing." 
When Harriet Martineau came to Washington, 
in 1835, the fact that she was deaf, very serious- 
minded and the author of books so profound 
that almost none of the Washington women had 
read them did not prevent her from being feted 
nearly to death. A very amusing account of 
Mrs. Smith's preliminary preparations for the 
dinner she purposed giving Miss Martineau is 
found in a letter to her sister.^ " The day pre- 
vious," she writes, " I sent for Henry Orr, 
whom I had always employed when I had com- 
pany and who is the most experienced and 
fashionable waiter in the city. * Henry,' said 
I, when he came, ' I am going to have a small 

^ The First Forty Years of Washington Society. 



230 ROMANTIC DAYS 

dinner party but, though small, I wish it to be 
peculiarly nice, everything of the best and most 
fashionable.' " 

Whereupon Henry proceeds to tell her that 
even for a " small genteel dinner " thirty dishes 
of meat are absolutely necessary. " ' For side 
dishes,' quoth he, ' you will have a very small 
ham, a small turkey, on each side of them par- 
tridges, mutton chops or sweetbreads, a macaroni 
pie, an oyster pie — ' ' That will do, that will 
do, Henry, now for vegetables.' ' Well, ma'am, 
stewed celery, spinach, salsify, cauliflower.' ' In- 
deed, Henry, you must substitute potatoes, 
beets, &c.' ' Why ma'am, they will not be 
genteel but, to be sure, if you say so, it must be 
so. Mrs. Forsyth, the other day, would have 
a plum pudding, she will keep to old fashions.' 
' What, Henry, plum pudding out of fashion.^ ' 

* La, yes, ma'am, all kinds of puddings and pies.' 

* Why, what then must I have at the head and 
foot of the table? ' ' Forms of ice-cream at 
the head, and a pyramid of anything, grapes, 
oranges or anything handsome at the foot.' 

" ' And the other dishes.'^ ' pursued Mrs. 
Smith eagerly. ' Jellies, custards, blanc-mange, 
cakes, sweetmeats and sugar-plums,' answered 
the unperturbed Henry. ' No nuts, raisins, 
figs.f^ ' ' Oh, no ma'am they are quite vulgar.* " 
Yet as these two talk on it develops that, the 
day before, at one of the magnificent dinners 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 231 

given for " the great English lady," Henry, 
who was waiting on table, had particularly 
noticed, with an eye to future business, what she 
ate and found that " a little turkey and a mite 
of ham " was all — absolutely all — that she 
took — so absorbed were she and Mr. Clay in 
their discussion of national debts! " They tells 
me ma'am," Henry confides, " that she is the 
greatest writer in England. ... If not another 
besides her was invited you ought to have a 
grand dinner. ... I dare say, ma'am," he 
tempted, " she'll put you in one of her books, ^ 
so you should do your very best." 

Yet eight dishes of meat were all to which 
Mrs. Smith would consent. The next day, 
when she hastened upstairs from the dining- 
room, she found Miss Martineau and her com- 
panion, Miss Jeffries, combing their hair in 
quite a comfortable and homely fashion. " You 
see," said the great English writer, " we have 
complied with your request and come sociably 
to pass the day with you. We have been walk- 

1 Miss Martineau did, as a matter of fact, put most of her Ameri- 
can experiences in her book. Society in America. A good many 
mistakes may be found in this work and rather too much dogmatism 
as well. But John Graham Brooks, who has made a special study 
of books which foreigners have written about America, declares that 
" at that time, not two books had been written on the United States 
so full of truth, so enriched by careful observation and stated with 
more sobriety." George Eliot once declared Miss Martineau to 
be " the only Englishwoman who possesses thoroughly the art of 
writing." 



232 ROMANTIC DAYS 

ing all the morning, our lodgings were too distant 
to return, so we have done as those who have 
no carriages do in England when they go to 
pass a social day." Mrs. Smith offered combs, 
brushes &c but Miss Martineau, showing the 
enormous pockets in her dress, said that they 
were provided with all that was necessary, and 
pulled out " nice little silk shoes, silk stockings, 
a scarf for her neck, little lace mits, a gold chain 
and some other jewelry, and soon, without chang- 
ing her dress, was prettily equipped for dinner or 
evening company." 

Even with only eight dishes of meat the din- 
ner was a success, too. Not being served until 
the then-very-late hour of five o'clock, the cur- 
tains were drawn and the candles lighted; and 
Miss Martineau, notwithstanding the fact that 
those who wished to talk with her had to do so 
through a tube, delighted them all by her charm 
and intelligence. " Ease and animation per- 
vaded the whole of the company " concludes 
Mrs. Smith, happily, " we had some delightful 
singing from the young ladies — Scotch songs 
to perfection. It was eleven o'clock before the 
party broke up! " 

A very interesting, but little understood, 
character of the early Republican period in 
Washington was Anne Roy all, publicist and 
editor. John Quincy Adams once bestowed 
upon Mrs. Royall the title " virago-errant in 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 233 

enchanted armor "; most books about Washing- 
ton refer to her, as *' that common scold, Anne 
Roy all." None the less, the fact remains that 
Mrs. Roy all was one of the most vigorous and 
picturesque personages of her time, — a woman 
quite worthy of the scholarly and gallant biog- 
raphy ^ recently written about her by Sarah 
Harvey Porter. 

A pioneer journalist, Mrs. Roy all had the 
unique privilege of talking with every man who 
became President of the United States from 
George Washington to Abraham Lincoln in- 
clusive. Hence her personal history is more 
" closely intertwined with, and more analogous 
to, the growth of our Republic than that of 
any other woman of whom record is preserved." 
It is, however, chiefly because Mrs. Roy all is 
" very good fun " that Miss Porter, according 
to her own words, has resurrected her; and it is 
because the story of Mrs. Roy all will help us 
to understand the times of which she was a 
part that I wish here to retrace her career. 
Born in Maryland in 1769, she lived, until she 
was thirteen, on the Indian-haunted frontier of 
Pennsylvania. At the age of twenty-eight she 
met and married Captain Roy all, many years 
her senior, and to him it was that she owed the 
education which made her able to do a man's 
work in the world at a time when most women 

^ The l/i^e and Times of Anne BoyaU: Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1900. 



234 ROMANTIC DAYS 

were tender, sheltered — and helpless — things. 
" Captain Roy all constantly led Anne to the 
contemplation of the principles of just govern- 
ment as laid down by his master Thomas Jeffer- 
son, and this training in state politics," declares 
Miss Porter, " was the foundation of Mrs. 
Royall's newspaper work long afterward." 

Then her husband died and Mrs. Roy all lost, 
for a time, the power to find a solace in books. 
But she traveled much at this period of her 
life, going from town to town with three slaves 
and a courier and drinking in the impressions 
which were afterwards to serve her so well. 
She was not yet pressed for money, as she came 
to be when her husband's nephew broke the 
will by which she had been left comfortably 
off. How very individual a person she had al- 
ready become we see, however, from some letters 
which, about this time, she sent to a young 
lawyer-friend. " Novels," she there declares, 
" corrupt the morals of our females and engender 
hardness of heart to real distress. Those most 
pleased with fictitious distress have hearts 
as hard as iron." Such was not Mrs. Royall's 
own heart. Wherever she went she extended 
a helping hand to women who needed her, be- 
lieving that nothing more calls for changing 
in this world than woman's inhumanity to 
woman. Once when her young correspondent's 
" conventional male " views had aroused her 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 235 

resentment she wrote, " You ask whether I 
would have ladies ' take such persons into their 
homes, associate with them? ' Yes, if they 
repent; I would not only take them into my 
house but unto my bosom. I would wipe the 
tears from their eyes — I would soothe their 
sorrows, and support them in the trying hour. 
I would divide my last morsel with them. For 
those who would not repent — if they were 
hungry, I would feed them; if they were naked 
I would clothe them; and much more, if they 
were sick I would minister unto them; I would 
admonish them and I would then have done. 
What did our Saviour .^^ I would not revile them. 
I would not persecute them." x4nd Anne Roy all 
lived up to the womanly charity that she 
preached. So consistently a Christian was she 
that her humble dwelling in Washington served 
almost continually as a refuge for some homeless, 
fallen woman! Yet she was persecuted, actually 
persecuted by the religious press of her time! 

Two reasons there were for this, or, I may 
better say, two explanations: Anne Royall 
believed in and defended Masonry — and she 
disbelieved in and attacked canting Evangel- 
icalism. Hence we find the New England Re- 
ligious Weekly declaring, during the Jackson 
era, " Mistress Anne Royall ... is now ap- 
plying herself to her old vocation with all the 
virulence of a Meg Merrilies. The old hag 



236 ROMANTIC DAYS 

publishes a weekly paper at Washington, ycleped 
the Paul Pry, which is a strong Jackson print 
and contains all the scum, billingsgate and filth 
extant." Mrs. Royall, after reprinting this 
unflattering picture of herself and her paper, 
comments dryly, " Wonder in what part of the 
Bible he found that? " 

Not that the lady herself treated too gently 
those who did not agree with her. Noble as 
she was in certain aspects, it is undeniable that 
she often dipped her pen in venom. To those 
she did not like she accorded words quite as 
bitter as her praise was fulsome on other oc- 
casions. This was, however, due in part to 
the very great hardships of her life in Washing- 
ton. When she had first arrived in the city with 
which her name was for so long to be associated 
she was a stranger, penniless and in bad health. 
Moreover, she was a lone woman — and she 
was fifty-five years old. She was then preparing 
and securing subscriptions to her initial book, 
Sketches of History, Life and Manners in the 
United States, and one of the first calls she made 
was upon John Quincy Adams, at this time 
Secretary of State under President Monroe. 
It is greatly to this good man's credit that he 
received the little woman courteously, paid his 
subscription to her book in advance, invited 
her to call on Mrs. Adams at their residence 
in F Street, and promised to ^ive his earnest 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 237 

support to her claim for the pension of a Rev- 
olutionary officer's widow. This promise he 
scrupulously fulfilled, and Mrs. Royall never 
forgot his kindness to her that morning when 
she was an utter stranger in a strange city. 

The book for which Adams had subscribed 
came out two years later, and within five years 
after that, while constantly traveling, Mrs. 
Royall issued no less than eleven volumes! 
A contemporary reviewer ^ thus characterizes 
her work: " She marches on, speaking her mind 
freely, and unpacks her heart in words of cen- 
sure or praise as she feels. Sometimes she lets 
fall more truths than the interested reader would 
wish to hear, and at others overwhelms her 
friends with a flattery still more appalling. At 
any rate, hit or miss, the sentiments she gives 
are undoubtedly her own; nor will it be denied 
that she has given some very good outlines of 
character. Her book is more amusing than any 
novel we have read for years." Writing nearly 
a century later, I can add that her books are 
sprightly in style and hence make good read- 
ing. 

It was not, however, until she had hit upon 
the device of compiling books whose chief feature 
should be pen portraits of famous living people 
that Mrs. Royall became a real power in Wash- 
ington. " I wish to write books that people 

^ In The Boston Commercial. 



238 ROMANTIC DAYS 

will read," she said in frank explanation of this 
departure, " and I find there is nothing like 
throwing in plenty of spice. Possibly a gentle- 
man may not like his portrait (for which he can 
give no reason) yet twenty other gentlemen may, 
and may buy the book for the sake of the por- 
trait." But Mrs. Royall's " spice " must not 
be confused with that of modern sensationalism. 
There was nothing of the blackmailer about her; 
she never pried into closets to discover family 
skeletons. The names of her newspapers, Paul 
Pry and the Huntress were most unfortunate, 
for they connote the kind of thing her work 
distinctly was not. Her concern, as a journalist, 
was that the state be kept free from the church ; 
that Masons ^ receive credit for noble idealism 
instead of abuse; that canting " Missionaries " 
be shown up as the hypocrites they often were; 
and that the CONSTITUTION OF THE 
UNITED STATES (the object of her adoration) 
be carefully and on all occasion safeguarded. 
Of course, she was in many ways the child of 
her time and, like her contemporaries, handled 
without gloves those whom she believed to be 
enemies of the country. Thus it was that she 
came to be indicted as a common scold. Only 
narrowly, indeed, did this doughty old woman 
escape a ducking in the Potomac (in 1829) 

^ The Anti-Masons were, at this time, a powerful and well-or- 
ganized political faction. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 239 

under the provisions of an obsolete law then 
exhumed for her benefit! 

That Anne Royall was a woman of tremendous 
courage is proved by the fact that, the very 
next year after being thus persecuted, she started 
her first Washington paper, the Paul Pry. 
A four-page paper, with selected material and 
advertisements on the two outside pages, this 
sheet, on its inside, was devoted to editorials 
and to political and local news, all of which was 
deeply colored by Mrs. Royall's personal preju- 
dices. One article, in an early issue, was against 
" Old Maids," then a term of reproach because 
there were at that time in our country plenty 
of men to go around. Mrs. Royall did not 
coin the phrase " race-suicide," but she was 
probably the first American to preach against 
that evil in print. Miss Porter thinks, adding 
that she was certainly the first woman to do so. 

For Andrew Jackson, whose personality dom- 
inated the United States throughout most of 
the years during which Mrs. Royall was a news- 
paper editor, the Paul Pry fought valiantly — 
not, as might be supposed, because Jacksonians 
had bought up the sheet, but because Mrs, 
Royall warmly admired Jackson the man. Miss 
Porter quotes a delightful story about a dinner 
which Jackson and the little-old-woman-journal- 
ist together enjoyed on one occasion. She had 
called in to present one of her books to the Presi- 



240 ROMANTIC DAYS 

dent and, when she opened her budget, he saw 
a partridge in the feather which she had bought 
for her dinner. He invited her in and the poor 
old woman made a hearty meal with him. 

Anne Royall was, indeed, poor; but not so 
poor that she would sell the silence of her little 
sheet on a question which seemed to her vital. 
Once, when she was hungry and cold and very 
depleted as to wardrobe, she was offered two 
thousand dollars for such silence. But she re- 
fused the bribe. " Some people think we write 
for money," she then said, '* and so we do, but 
we are not a hireling writer." So effectively, 
indeed, did she attack what seemed to her evils 
that, on more than one occasion, she was sub- 
jected to physical violence. But this did not 
deter her from fighting for the causes to which 
she had pledged allegiance. One of these was 
opposing a law to stop the transportation of 
mail on Sunday, another opposition to a threat- 
ened nullification of the tariff laws. Mrs. 
Royall and that other famous journalist of 
our own day, Ida Tarbell, appear to be the only 
women America has produced with ability 
to grasp the ins and outs of tariff legislation! 

Nothing but the necessity of " repairing our 
clothes " caused the Huntress and the Paul 
Pry to skip an issue. " No paper will be issued 
from this office this week," we sometimes find 
the editor announcing. " We really must take 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 241 

one week once in ten years to fix up our ward- 
robe, which is getting shabby!" Truly had 
Anne Royall said, " You might stop my breath 
if you stop my pen." Even at eighty-five she 
was putting out her two httle sheets on time, 
confiding to her readers, in the Huntress of 
June 24, 1854, that " we are getting strong and 
feel as blithe and gay as ever." Her end was 
near, however; for the following month she 
issued (July 2) what was to prove her Valedic- 
tory. Here she says editorially: "We trust 
in Heaven for three things : First, that Members 
may give us the means to pay for this paper — 
perhaps three or four cents a Member — a few of 
them are behind hand in their subscriptions, but 
the fault is not theirs; it was owing to Sally's 
sickness. Others, again, have paid us from two 
to six dollars. Our printer is a poor man. We 
have only thirty -one cents in the world, and for 
the first time since we have resided in this city 
— thirty -one years — we were unable to pay our 
last month's rent. . . . Second, that Washington 
may escape that dreadful scourge, the cholera. 
Our third prayer is [and these were Anne Roy all's 
last printed words] that the UNION OF THESE 
STATES MAY BE ETERNAL." 

Though Mrs. Royall's later life falls outside 
the period to which this book intends, for the 
most, to liiiit itself, her entire career has here 
been included because she really belongs in 



242 ROMANTIC DAYS 

the early Republic. I regard her, indeed, as 
a forgotten heroine of that far-away time and 
I am glad to honor her, as has Dr. Ainsworth 
R. Spofford,^ " because, in a ruder age than ours, 
she conquered adversity and ate her hard- 
earned bread in the sweat of her brow." 

* In a paper on " Early Washington Journalists." 






CHAPTER IV 



BALTIMORE 



UP to the time of the Revolution Baltimore 
increased very slowly in size. One chron- 
icler tells us that, in 1752, the settlement 
had only twenty-five houses and two hundred 
inhabitants. (A Rooseveltian family for each 
house!) Even as late as 1773 the town had 
no newspaper, merchants sending their advertise- 
ments to Annapolis and Philadelphia until that 
happy day when William Goddard, who had 
for some years been a successful publisher in 
Pennsylvania, removed to Maryland and issued 
(Friday morning, October 20, 1773,) his first 
copy of the Maryland Journal and Baltimore 
Advertiser. At this early period Fairs were held 
at stated intervals, thus doing something to 
promote exchange; but Baltimore had not yet 
become the chief town of the Province nor gained 
any great commercial ascendency. 

Delightfully simple appear to have been the 
social customs of the place in these pre-Revolu- 
tionary days. As it drew towards evening, the 



244 ROMANTIC DAYS 

old diarists tell us, it was the custom of the 
family, " especially the female part," to dress 
up neatly and sit on the street porch. Callers 
went from porch to porch in their neighborhood 
to sit awhile and converse. Merchants then 
lived on the same spot where they pursued their 
business and their wives and daughters very 
often served in the stores. The retail dry-goods 
business was mostly in the hands of widows or 
maiden ladies. At Christmas, dinners and sup- 
pers went the round of every social circle, and 
they who partook of the former were also ex- 
pected to remain for the latter. Men and women 
then hired out by the year as servants in a fashion 
which would have delighted Mrs. Trollope,^ 
the former getting sixteen to twenty pounds 
annually for their labor and the latter about 
half these sums. Yet even out of these small 
wages people were able to " lay up money," 
as the phrase goes, and so, when ready for mar- 
riage, could buy the bed, bedding and silver tea- 
spoons and the spinning-wheel and " dresser " 
absolutely essential to a self-respecting house- 
hold of that day. Where the contracting parties 
were " well off," getting married involved a 
large expenditure for entertainment, however. 
Those who came to dine remained for tea and 
supper, also. And for two days punch was dealt 
out in profusion. 

* Cf. Domestic Manners of the Americans, p. 61. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 245 

Happily cookery in general was plainer then 
than now. Chocolate was served morning and 
evening coffee as a beverage being little used. 
Of furniture most households had only the 
necessary things prior to the War of Independ- 
ence, sofas, carpets, sideboards and marble 
mantels being practically unknown. " A white 
floor sprinkled with clean white sand, large 
tables and heavy, high-backed chairs of solid 
walnut or mahogany were considered all that a 
parlour needed. Upstairs there would be a show 
parlour, not used except upon gala occasions, and 
then not to dine in." 

One very curious custom which had some 
vogue in the Baltimore of this period was that 
of transplanting teeth. A certain Doctor Le 
Mayeur, a dentist of Philadelphia, had con- 
ceived the idea of buying the front teeth of 
those willing to sell and placing the same in 
the mouths of those anxious to replace losses. 
Two guineas was often paid the person with a 
tooth to trade. And several respectable ladies 
of Baltimore invested in these articles, gladly 
living on milk and soft food for two months for 
the sake of their greatly improved appearance 
when the bough ten teeth had "grown in." One of 
the " Mischianza " belles had such teeth, we are 
disenchantingly told. Which one, however, 
deponent saith not. I fervently hope it was not 
our lovely Peggy Shippen! 



246 ROMANTIC DAYS 

While the Revolution was in progress, a 
spirit of enterprise began to show itself in Balti- 
more and during the early days of the Republic ^ 
trade in the staple productions of Maryland — 
particularly tobacco — grew apace. Organized 
amusements, too, now come to the fore, the 
dancing assembly soon obtaining high vogue. 
The subscription here was £3 155, admitting 
" no gentleman under 21 years, nor lady under 
18. The supper consisted of tea, chocolate, 
and rusk. Everything was conducted by rule 
of six married managers, who distributed places 
by lot, and partners were engaged for the evening, 
leaving nothing to the success of forwardness 
or favoritism. Gentlemen always drank tea 
with the parents of the ladies who were their 
partners, the day after the assembly — a sure 
means of producing a more lasting acquaintance, 
if mutually desirable." ^ Invitations to these 
functions were printed on the backs of playing- 
cards, blank cards not being then obtainable 
in America. To these balls guests, women as 
well as men, often rode in full dress on horse- 
back. For prior to 1800 not over half a dozen 
four-wheel carriages could be found in the entire 
city. 

The theatre-going spirit appears to have been 

^ Baltimore town became a city December 31, 1796, with a pop- 
ulation of about 20,000. 
2 Scharfs Chronicles. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 247 

active in Maryland even before Baltimore had 
evolved beyond the village stage. Annapolis, 
indeed, claims the first theatre, in point of time, 
ever erected in the United States ! " This," 
we read,^ " was a neat brick building, taste- 
fully arranged, and competent to contain be- 
tween five and six hundred persons. It was 
built upon ground which had been leased from 
St. Ann's Protestant Episcopal Church, which 
lease expired about the year 1820, when the 
church took possession of the theatre." Thus, 
at the time when Baltimore had only its " 25 
houses and 200 inhabitants," the " Beaux' Strat- 
agem " was being performed (July 13, 1752) at 
a theatre in nearby Annapolis! In Baltimore 
no temple to the dramatic muse was erected 
for another thirty years. The following play- 
bill was then published in the papers of the day : 

THE NEW THEATRE IN BALTIMORE 

Will Open, This Evening, being the 15th of January, 1782, 
With an HISTORICAL TRAGEDY, called 

KING RICHARD III. 

Containing — The Distresses and death of King Henry 
VI. in the Tower; The inhuman Murder of the young 
Prince ; the Usurpation of the Throne by Richard; the 
Fall of the Duke of Buckingham; the landing of Rich- 
mond at Milfords Haven; the Battle of Bosworth Field, 
and Death of Richard, which put an end to the Conten- 

^Scharfs Chronicles, p. 112. 



248 ROMANTIC DAYS 

tion between the Houses of York and Lancaster; with 
many other Historical Passages. 

King Richard, by Mr. Wall. 

Earl of Richmond > By Gentlemen for their Amuse- 
And Tressel ) ment. 

King Henry, by Mr. Tilyard; Duke of Buckingham, 
by Mr. Shakespeare; Prince Edward, by a young Gentle- 
man; Duke of York, by Miss Wall; Lord Stanley, Mr. 
Lindsay; Catesby, by Mr. Killgour; Ratcliff, by Mr. 
Atherton; Lady Anne, by Mr. Bartholomew; Queen 
EUzabeth, by Mrs. Wall. 

An OCCASIONAL PROLOGUE by MR. WALL, 

to which will be added a FARCE, called 

MISS IN HER TEENS 
Or The Medley of Lovers. 

Boxes: one Dollar: Pit Five Shillings: Galleries 9d. 

Doors to be open at Half-past Four, and will begin at 
Six o'clock. 

No persons can be admitted without Tickets, which 
may be had at the Coffee House in Baltimore, and at 
Lindlay's Coffee House on Fells-Point. 

*^* No Persons will on any pretence be admitted behind 
the Scenes. 

Concerning this old Play House John P. 
Kennedy, writing ^ in the middle of the last 
century of the Baltimore of long ago, has much 
that is delightful to say: " It stood in Holliday 
Street on the site afterwards occupied by a 
' theatre.' What a superb thing it was ! — speak- 

* In Our Country, Baltimore, 1864. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 249 

ing now as my fancy imagined it then. It had 
something of the splendor of a great barn, 
weather-hoarded, milk white, with many win- 
dows, and to my conception, looked with a 
hospitable, patronizing, tragi-comic greeting 
down upon the street. It never occurred to 
me to think of it as a piece of architecture. It 
was something above that — a huge mystical 
Aladdin's lamp that had a magic to repel criti- 
cism and was filled with wonderful histories. 
There Blue Beard strangled his wives and hung 
them on pegs in the Blue Chamber; . . . and 
there the Babes in the Wood went to sleep 
under the coverlet provided for them by the 
charitable robins that swung down upon wires, 

— which we thought was even superior to the 
ordinary manner of flying; and the ghost of 
Gaffer Thumb came up through the floor, as 
white as a dredge box of flour could make him 

— much more natural than any common ghost 
we had seen. . . . The age now, is too fast for 
the old illusions and the theatre deals in re- 
spectable swindlers, burglars and improper 
young ladies as more consonant with the public 
favour than our old devils, ghosts and assassins, 
which were always in their true colors and were 
sure to be severely punished when they perse- 
cuted innocence. 

" The players were part and parcel of the 
play-house and therefore shared in the juvenile 



250 ROMANTIC DAYS 

admiration with which it was regarded. . . . 
The players understood this, and therefore did 
not allow themselves to grow too familiar. 
One company served Baltimore and Phila- 
delphia, and they had their appointed seasons — 
a few months or even weeks at a time, — and 
they played only three times a week. ' The 
actors are coming hither, my lord,' would seem 
to intimate that this was the condition of things 
at Elsinore — one company and a periodical 
visit. In old Baltimore, too, there was universal 
gladness when the word was passed round — 
'the players are come.' It instantly became 
everybody's business to give them a good re- 
ception. . . . When our players came with their 
short seasons, their three nights in a week, and 
their single company they were received as 
public benefactors, and their stay was a period 
of carnival. The boxes were engaged for every 
night. Families all went together, young and 
old. Smiles were on every face: the town was 
happy. The elders did not frown on the drama, 
the clergy levelled no cannon against it, the 
critics were amiable. The chief actors were in- 
vited into the best company, and I believe their 
personal merits entitled them to all the esteem 
that was felt for them." 

Of the Kembles, whom we find being hos- 
pitably entertained at Baltimore in 1833, this 
last statement is certainly true, What Fanny 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 251 

Kemble says about the courtesies she received 
here and of the way the town impressed her 
is very interesting and so worth while to quote 
— even if it does take us a Httle too far ahead in 
point of time. " Baltimore, itself, as far as I 
have seen it, strikes me as a large rambling 
red-brick village on the outskirts of one of our 
manufacturing towns, Birmingham or Manches- 
ter. It covers an immense extent of ground, 
but there are great gaps and vacancies in the 
middle . . . which at present give it an un- 
tidy, unfinished straggling appearance. 

" While my father and I were exploring about 
together yesterday, we came to a print-shop, 
whose window exhibited an engraving of Reyn- 
olds's Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, and 
Lawrence's picture of my uncle John in Hamlet. 
We stopped before them, and my father looked 
with a good deal of emotion at these beautiful 
representations of his beautiful kindred, and 
it was a sort of sad surprise to meet them in 
this other world where we are wandering, aliens 
and strangers. This is the newest-looking place 
we have yet visited, the youngest in appearance 
in this young world; and I have experienced 
today a disagreeable instance of its immature 
civilization, or at any rate, its small proficiencies 
in the elegances of life. I wanted to ride but, 
although a horse was to be found, no such thing 
as a side-saddle could be procured at any livery- 



252 ROMANTIC DAYS 

stable or saddler's in the town, so I have been 
obliged to give up my projected exercise. . . . 

" There is a foreign — I mean continental — 
custom here, which is pleasant. They have a 
table d'hote dinner at two o'clock, and while it 
is going on a very tolerable band plays all man- 
ner of Italian airs and German waltzes, and as 
there is a fine long corridor into which my room- 
door opens, with a window at each end, I have 
a very agreeable promenade, and take my exer- 
cise to this musical accompaniment. . . . Our 
windows are all wide open; the heat is in- 
tense.^ . . . 

** In a week's time we are going on to Wash- 
ington, where we shall find dear Washington 
Irving, whom I think I shall embrace, for Eng- 
land's sake as well as his own. We have letters 
to the President, to whom we are to be presented, 
and to his rival, Henry Clay, and to Daniel 
Webster, whom I care more to know than 
either of the others. ... I spent yesterday with 
some very pleasant people here, who are like 
old-fashioned English folk, the Catons, Lady 
Wellesley's father and mother. They are just 
now in deep mourning for Mrs. Caton's father, 
the venerable Mr. Carroll, who was upward of 
ninety -five years old when he died, and was the 
last surviving signer of the Declaration of 
Independence. I saw a lovely picture by Law- 

•■ Though it was January! 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 253 

rence of the eldest of the three beautiful sisters, 
the daughters of Mrs. Caton, who have all 
married Englishmen of rank. (The Marchioness 
of Wellesley, the Duchess of Leeds, and Lady 
Stafford. The fashion of marrying in England 
seems to be traditional in this family. Miss 
McTavish, niece of these ladies, married Mr. 
Charles Howard, son of the Earl of Carlisle.) 
The Baltimore women are celebrated for their 
beauty, and I think they are the prettiest 
creatures I have ever seen as far as their faces 
go." 

Of the " three beautiful Catons," as they were 
called, Mary Ann (the Marchioness of Wellesley) 
had married Robert Patterson, brother of Mrs. 
Jerome Bonaparte, for her first husband. She 
was the lady whom the Duke of Wellington long 
admired and who, when a widow, consoled her- 
self (in 1825) by espousing his brother, then 
Viceroy of Ireland. It was of this famous 
beauty that Richard Lalor Shiel, who saw her 
as a mature woman at a ball in Dublin, said, with 
quite unconscious condescension, " Nobody 
would have suspected that she had not 
originally belonged to the proud aristocracy 
to which she had been recently annexed. She 
had nothing of la hourgeoise parvenue. She ex- 
ecuted her courtesies with a remarkable grace- 
fulness, and her stateliness sat as naturally 
upon her as though she inherited it by royal 



254 ROMANTIC DAYS 

descent! " She died at Hampton Court in 
December, 1853. 

Following Fanny Kemble has, however, led 
us too far ahead in our story of Baltimore. 
For the town was still a pretty primitive place 
— even if its daughters were marrying into the 
nobility of Europe. Hogs ran loose in the 
streets early in the century and for many years 
later, ^ engaged apparently in the function of 
the scavengers. 

For the Baltimore of this period, — " when 
building lots were for the most part still sold 
by the acre, — " though passing out of the village 
phase, had not yet left behind it its village lim- 
itations and its village peculiarities. It had 
its heroes and its fine old gentlemen, its ac- 
complished lawyers, divines, physicians and 
public-spirited merchants. The people all knew 
them and treated them with amiable deference. 
Society, too, had a more aristocratic air then than 
later — not because the educated and wealthy 
assumed more, but because the community it- 
self had a better appreciation of personal worth, 
and voluntarily gave it the healthful privilege 
of taking the lead in the direction of manners 
and in the conducting of public affairs. This 
was, perhaps, the lingering characteristic of 
colonial life, which the Revolution had not 
effaced. 
^ Von Raumea:. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 255 

The avenue of a fine afternoon was a very 
delightful promenade — in spite of the pigs, we 
must conclude. For there might be seen " ma- 
trons and damsels, some with looped up skirts, 
some in brocade luxuriantly displayed over hoops, 
with comely boddices supported by stays dis- 
closing perilous waists, and with sleeves that 
clung to the arm as far as the elbow, where they 
were lost in ruffles that stood off like the feathers 
of the bantam. . . . And then such faces! so 
rosy, spirited and sharp ; — with the hair drawn 
over a cushion . . . tight enough to lift the eye- 
brows into a rounder curve, giving a pungent 
supercilious expression to the countenance. . . . 
Then they stepped away in such a mincing gait, 
in shoes of many colours with formidable points 
at the toes and high tottering heels delicately 
cut in wood; and in towering peaked hats, 
garnished with feathers that swayed aristocrat- 
ically backward and forward at each step, as 
if they took pride in the stately paces of the 
wearer. In the train of these goodly groups 
came the gallants who upheld the chivalry 
of the age; — cavaliers of the old school, full 
of starch and powder: most of them the iron 
gentlemen of the Revolution, with leather 
faces. ... It was, indeed, a sight worth seeing, 
when one of these weather-beaten gallants 
accosted a lady on the street. There was a bow 
which required the whole width of the pavement, 



256 ROMANTIC DAYS 

a scrape of the foot and the cane thrust with 
a flourish under the left arm and projecting 
behind in a parallel line with the cue. And noth- 
ing could be more piquant than the lady's 
return of the salutation, in a curtsey that brought 
her, with bridled chin and a most winning glance, 
halfway to the ground." ^ 

Even the seasons, if we may trust Mr. Ken- 
nedy, knew how to comport themselves with 
more dignity then than now. " There were none 
of your soft Italian skies and puny affectation 
of April in December. But winter strutted 
in, like a peremptory bandit on the stage, as 
one* who knew his power and wasn't to be trifled 
with, and took possession of sky and field and 
river in good earnest, flinging his snowy cloak 
upon the ground as a challenge to all comers, 
determined that it should lie there until he 
chose to take it up and continue his journey. 
And the nights seemed to be made on purpose 
for frolicks [sic] — they were so bright and crisp 
and so inviting to the jovial spirits of the time 
who, crowded in sleighs, sped like laughing 
phantoms over every highway, echoing back 
the halloos of boys that, at every street 
corner, greeted them with vollies of snow-balls. 
And the horse-bells, jangling the music of rev- 
elry from many a near and many a distant 
quarter, told of the universal mirth that fol- 
^ Kennedy. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 257 

lowed upon the track of the old-fashioned win- 
ter." Not at all a bad place for young people 
to grow up in, it would appear — even if Eliza- 
beth Patterson did attribute to the dulness of 
her home town her unfortunate marriage with 
the cad-brother of the great Napoleon. 

A good deal of romance has been wasted on 
the relations between these two self-seeking 
young people and, but for the fact that this 
marriage of an American to a Bonaparte is 
a subject of perennial interest, it would not be 
worth while to retell here this disappointingly 
sordid story. For, since the lady's letters have 
come to light, it has grown quite clear that she 
married Jerome for his name and rank and that 
he married her because in that way only could 
he possess her beautiful person, which had cap- 
tivated his easily -kindled passion. Young as 
he was he had already had several affaires, and 
Sir Augustus Foster tells us ^ that, before even 
he met Elizabeth Patterson, Jerome had been 
taking advantage, in Washington, of the custom 
by which a young lady occasionally entrusted 
herself alone, in this country, to the escort of 
one whom she supposed to be a gentleman. In 
a word, he early demonstrated the truth of that 
mot, attributed to his American wife, when, quite 
disenchanted, she declared him: *' un Hard qui 
s^est glise par hazard entre deux Napoleons.'* 

^ See Quarterly Review of 1841. 



258 ROMANTIC DAYS 

The Emperor himself she never ceased to admire 
even though he was consistently scornful of 
her and steadfastly refused to receive her. Per- 
haps he feared that even his resolution might 
yield to the influence of her great charm and 
wonderful beauty, beauty so striking that it 
drew from Madame Recamier the compliment, 
" Vous etes la 'plus belle femme au monde, plus 
belle meme que la parfaite Pauline Borghese.^* 

" Mais ga est bien, impossible y" was the clever 
reply, " vue que ma belle soeur est parfaitement 
belle.'' 

Jerome Bonaparte had always had over- 
whelming desire to own beautiful things. There 
is a story to the effect that, when only fifteen, 
he purchased a traveling-case with silver, ivory 
and mother-of-pearl fittings, the cost of which 
was 10,000 francs. The bill for this trifle came 
in due time to Napoleon, who, at dinner-time, 
said to his brother, " So, sir, it is you who in- 
dulge in ten thousand franc travelling-cases.'* 
*' Yes," said Jerome, quite unembarrassed. " You 
see I am like that. I only care for beautiful 
things." 

Nor did he in the least scruple about the 
means by which he obtained what he wanted. 
In the memoirs of Mademoiselle Cochelet, a 
schoolfellow of Hortense Beauharnais under 
Madame Campan, is told the tale of a youthful 
trick once played by Jerome upon his uncle. Abbe 




MADAME JEROME BONAPARTE. 



From the miniature by Augustin, made in Paris in 1814, notv in 
the possession of Edward Biddle, of Philadelphia. 



f- 




IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 259 

Fesch, when he wanted pocket-money, a tale 
which, although pretty flagrant, is said to have 
ehcited only a laugh of appreciation when related 
to the First Consul! Jerome, it seems, had spent 
all his quarter's pocket-money in advance and 
now urgently required twentj^-five louis. All 
his brothers were away except Napoleon whom 
he dared not ask; and his mother had not the 
money in hand to give him. So he sought out 
his uncle Fesch whom he found with a dinner 
company to entertain. He was, however, in- 
vited to remain; which he did. After dinner 
a move was made to the salon for coffee. Seeing 
his uncle enter an adjoining room Jerome fol- 
lowed, made his request and was refused. In 
a trice the boy had drawn the sword he was 
wearing and, pointing to one of his uncle's 
priceless Van Dycks on the wall, he said, 
" That fellow appears to be laughing at me; 
I must avenge myself upon him." The agitated 
priest caught the lad's arm as he was making 
for the picture, Jerome again mentioned the 
twenty -five louis, the uncle gave way, the sword 
was sheathed, and an embrace followed the 
bargain. 

Thus it was to a spoilt child possessing the 
vices of a dissipated man that Elizabeth Patter- 
son, despite the protests of her family, united her- 
self in marriage on the Christmas Eve of 1803. 
Their wedding notice may be found in the Federal 



260 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Gazette of Tuesday, December 27. It reads as 
follows: "Married, on Saturday evening last, 
by the Reverend Bishop Carroll, Mr. Jerome 
Bonaparte, youngest brother of the First Consul 
of the French Republic, to Miss Elizabeth 
Patterson, eldest daughter of William Patterson, 
Esquire, of this city." This was the marriage 
to sustain which Pope Pius VII braved the anger 
of the most powerful man in Europe. No wonder 
all the American Bonapartes are devout Cath- 
olics ! 

That William Patterson, from the very first, 
heartily disapproved of this marriage and did 
everything in his power to prevent it from being 
consummated there seems no shadow of doubt. 
Nor can one read his letters to his daughter 
without feeling that she deserved — on account 
of her later conduct as well as because of her 
youthful indiscretion — the censure in her 
father's will one passage in which runs as 
follows: " The conduct of my daughter, Betsey, 
has through life been so disobedient that in no 
instance has she ever consulted my opinions 
or feelings; indeed she has caused me more 
anxiety and trouble than all my children put 
together, and her folly and misconduct have 
occasioned me a train of expense that, first and 
last, has cost me much money." In accordance 
with which he left Elizabeth less than any of 
his other children. Some have called his con- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 261 

duct cruel; it does not so seem to me after ex- 
amining as much of the evidence on both sides 
as I have been able to command. 

There is a good deal of such evidence, first 
and last, inasmuch as the entire series of English 
and French letters on this subject fell, early 
in the seventies of the last century, into the 
hands of a Philadelphia publisher ^ who had 
purchased them from a Baltimore paper-maker. 
The latter obtained them as waste paper directly 
from Mr. William Patterson's old warehouse on 
Gay Street. Madame Bonaparte was then still 
living and when the proof sheets of the greater 
part of the book were sent to her for examination 
and comment she replied that " the publication 
of the volume was a matter of perfect indiffer- 
ence to her! " 

That a woman of eighty -seven was too old to 
be bothered with any such decision as the publi- 
cation of these letters involved would be at once 
conceded but for the fact that Madame Bona- 
parte, up to the age of ninety, was in the habit 
of personally conducting her extensive business 
affairs. Thus we are forced to conclude that she 
really wished to have all the facts about her 
extraordinary marriage revealed. Up to the 
time of her last illness, indeed, she cherished 
each bit of finery associated with her early 
triumphs and was never weary of rehearsing 

1 W. T. R. Saffel. 



262 ROMANTIC DAYS 

to her friends the stories with which these were 
connected. Nor did her interest in European 
poHtics ever disappear — though she cared 
nothing at all for American affairs, always 
considering it her great misfortune that she 
had been born under the Stars and Stripes. 
When negroes were admitted to Congress 
she is said to have caustically remarked that 
*' baboons were in the Senate, and monkeys 
in the House, which was carrying republican 
principles out to their legitimate ends." 
One wonders, after reading this, whether 
it was Elizabeth Patterson's misfortunes which 
made her bitter or her congenital acerbity of 
temper which invited her misfortunes. While 
she was still young, handsome and envied, it 
was universally said of her, " She charms by 
her eyes and slays with her tongue." 

Even caustic wit,^ however, is forgiven to 
a girl of sufficient beauty and Elizabeth Pat- 
terson's sharp tongue did not in the least pre- 
vent her from being the belle of Baltimore at 
the time (1803) when Captain Jerome Bona- 
parte and his suite arrived in the town for a 
short visit. These two, who were long to pose 
as America's most romantic lovers, encountered 
each other for the first time at the Baltimore 

^ Didier says truly, in the preface to his Life and Letters of 
Madame Bonaparte that this girl appears to have possessed the 
savdr faire of Chesterfield, the cold cjTiicism of Rochefoucauld and 
the practical economy of Franklin! 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 263 

races, Elizabeth looking irresistibly charming 
in a buff silk dress, a lace fichu, and a leghorn 
hat with pink tulle trimmings and black plumes. 
There is a story that she then became somehow 
caught by a gold chain which formed part of 
the magnificent attire of the First Consul's 
brother and that she was thereby reminded of 
a prophecy, made to her as a child, to the effect 
that she would one day be a great lady in France. 
This sounds apocryphal ; but so, for that matter, 
do many of the proven incidents in the remark- 
able story of these young lovers. For they be- 
came lovers almost at once — following their 
formal introduction at the house of Honorable 
Samuel Chase, one of the Maryland signers 
of the Declaration of Independence and the 
father-in-law of Commodore Barney, through 
whom Jerome had come to Baltimore. In a 
few weeks they were engaged ; without, however, 
it need scarcely be added, the consent of Mr. 
Patterson. That gentleman, indeed, foreseeing 
the great risk his daughter would run in marry- 
ing the minor and dependent brother of Na- 
poleon, tried, by sending his daughter to Vir- 
ginia, to break off the intimacy. But the ex- 
periment was useless. The two were in com- 
munication all the time, and upon the lady's 
return to Baltimore, the last of October, a 
marriage license was at once taken out by them. 
In less than a week after this a warning letter 



264 ROMANTIC DAYS 

reached the harassed father informing him that 
Captain Bonaparte had no intention of sticking 
to this bride but " would be the first to turn 
your daughter off, and laugh at her credulity." 
Again, Mr. Patterson tried to use his authority 
to the end that the marriage be not consum- 
mated. But Miss Patterson declared that marry 
this man she would, adding that '* she would 
rather be the wife of Jerome Bonaparte for an 
hour than the wife of any other man for life." 
At least, this is what she is reputed to have 
said and it was obviously the appropriate 
speech for a girl madly in love. From her sub- 
sequent letters, however, we must conclude 
that what really dazzled her about Jerome was 
his nearness to a European kingdom. Moreover, 
she longed unspeakably to get away from Balti- 
more which she seems actually to have "hated 
and loathed." ^ 

So, less than four months after their first 
meeting, these obstinate young people realized 
their desire, Mr. Patterson having, however, 
taken all possible precaution that the union 
should be indissoluble. The religious ceremony 
was performed, as has been said, by Bishop, 
afterwards Archbishop Carroll, and the marriage 
contract drawn up by Alexander J. Dallas, who 
was later to be Secretary of the Treasury. 
Among those who witnessed the wedding were 

^ See her letter to her father of December 4, 1829. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 265 

• 

M. Sotin, the French consul at Baltimore, 
Alexander Le Camus, then Jerome's secretary 
and afterwards Minister of Foreign Affairs 
of the kingdom of Westphalia, as well as the 
Mayor of Baltimore and several other leading 
citizens. Jerome's costume on this festive oc- 
casion was sumptuous in the extreme. His 
coat was of purple satin, laced and embroidered, 
the white satin-lined skirts reaching to his heels. 
He wore knee-breeches, his shoes had diamond 
buckles and his hair was powdered. Of the 
bride's clothes one of the guests is reported to 
have said that he could have put them all in 
his pocket. Another witness relates in horror 
that she wore " only a single garment under- 
neath! " Very likely. She probably considered 
her Indian muslin gown, embellished with old 
lace and pearls, about all the clothing that was 
necessary. For on an occasion not long after- 
ward Mrs. Washington is found commenting 
rather scathingly on the extreme liberality with 
which Mrs. Bonaparte displays her shoulders; 
and Phoebe Morris, in a letter dated February 
17, 1812, refers to the fact that, at a ball, this 
lovely matron's " sylphic form " was so " thinly 
veiled as to display all the graces of a Venus 
de Medicis." 

Immediately following the marriage the young 
couple proceeded to the Pattersons' estate, 
" Homestead," outside Baltimore, for their 



266 ROMANTIC DAYS 

honeymoon and, shortly afterwards, they went 
to Washington where they were entertained by 
the French Minister and enjoyed for several 
weeks all the gayety of which the national 
capital was capable. Later they made a long 
tour to the Northern and Eastern States, and 
in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Albany and 
elsewhere, were tendered one continuous round 
of hospitality. 

Meanwhile the French Consul-General had 
sent Talleyrand word that the alliance they had 
both been fearing was now a reality; and Mr. 
Patterson, having first written (February 10, 
1804) to the Honorable Robert R. Livingston, 
American Minister to France, that he "had 
never directly or indirectly countenanced or 
gave Mr. Bonaparte the smallest encouragement 
to address my daughter. . . but finding that 
the mutual attachment they had formed for 
each other was such that nothing short of force 
and violence could prevent their union, had 
consented to it with much reluctance " now 
dispatched his son Robert to France to see what 
could be done towards reconciling the First 
Consul to the marriage. In passing through 
London on his way to Paris young Mr. Patter- 
son obtained letters of introduction from Miss 
Monroe, daughter of James Monroe, to Joseph- 
ine's daughter with whom the former had es- 
tablished a lasting friendship while at Madame 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 267 

Campari's school. These and Madame Campan's 
own intercessions — she was on very intimate 
terms with the family of the First Consul be- 
sides being interested in Americans from the 
fact that her brother had married the daughter 
of De Witt Clinton — were expected to be of 
considerable service in softening the Great 
Man's wrath. 

But it was all of no avail. Napoleon, from 
the very first, was as adamant toward Jerome 
in this matter of his marriage, treating him as 
a naughty child, — who was also a disobedient 
subject, — and steadfastly refusing to recognize 
either the legality of the union or the rights 
of the beautiful young wife. Lucien Bonaparte, 
however, heartily assured Robert Patterson 
that the whole family, with the exception of the 
Consul, highly approved the match, and he gave 
Jerome the excellent advice that he become an 
American citizen and proceed to carve out his 
own fortune in the land where he had found his 
wife. But this counsel suited Elizabeth as 
little as it suited her husband; I fancy that she 
even preferred to such " mistaken kindness " 
the uncompromising cruelty of Napoleon's 
fiat, interpreted by the French Minister of 
Marine thus: "Jerome has received orders, 
in his capacity of lieutenant of the fleet, to come 
back to France by the first French frigate re- 
turning thither; and the execution of this 



268 ROMANTIC DAYS 

order, on which the First Consul insists in the 
most positive manner, can alone regain him his 
affection. But what the First Consul has pre- 
scribed for me, above everything, is to order 
you to prohibit all captains of French vessels 
from receiving on board the young person to 
whom the Citizen Jerome has connected himself, 
it being his intention that she shall by no means 
come into France, and his will that, should she 
arrive, she be suffered not to land, but be sent 
immediately back to the United States." 

This, then, was the dampening news from 
France that reached the young couple in the 
summer of 1804 while they were enjoying to 
the full the brilliant social life of New York. 
There arrived also a document which declared 
that ''by an act of 11th Ventose, all the civil 
officers of the Empire are prohibited from re- 
ceiving on their registers the transcription of 
the act of celebration of a pretended marriage 
that Jerome Bonaparte has contracted in a 
foreign country during the age of minority, 
without the consent of his mother, and without 
previous publication in the place of his nativity." 
Jerome must have begun to fear, as he read 
this, that, in this connection as in many later 
ones, protests would have absolutely no strength 
against his brother's iron will. 

Yet he still put on a bold front, declaring that 
he would soon sail for France and would take 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 269 

with him his fair young wife whom Napoleon 
had only to see to accept as a member of the 
family. A start was made, in a ship sailing from 
Philadelphia for Cadiz towards the end of Octo- 
ber. But a dangerous gale overtook their craft, 
and, having narrowly escaped with their lives, 
they again found themselves in America. The 
*' proper thing " would have been for Madame 
Bonaparte to be overwhelmed with thanksgiving 
at being thus rescued from a watery grave. 
But, instead, she blithely made an excellent meal 
of roast goose and apple sauce, at the home of 
the people who took her in, running back and 
forth at intervals, from the house to the yard, 
to see how well her handsome clothes on the 
line were drying after the shipwreck! ^ This 
was the last attempt of the young Bonapartes 
to sail for Europe that year. 

In the spring of the following year, however, 
the voyage was actually accomplished in one of 
Mr. Patterson's own vessels, the Erin, which he 
was glad to provide for the purpose. With the 
party went William Patterson, Junior, a brother 
of Elizabeth; Le Camus, Jerome's secretary, 
and Garnier, Jerome's doctor, of whom the young 
wife, who was expecting a child, might have 
sore need ere the journey ended. The passage 
was quite uneventful, though, as we learn by 

^ A very elegant wadded pelisse, which she had on when thrown 
into the water, very nearly proved her destruction. 



270 ROMANTIC DAYS 

this letter, sent back to Mr. Patterson, in Je- 
rome's own hand and with his own English. 

" On Board of the Erin, 
the 2d April 1805 

" I have the pleasure of writing to you, dear 
father, from the arbous of Lisbon where we 
arrive this morning the 21st day of our departure 
from Cape Henry. We shall be obliged to per- 
form a quarantine of 16 days, but I have al- 
ready found the way for not doing it, and in 
three days I shall be ready to proceed on my 
long, monotonne and fatiging journey. My 
feelings for you, my second mother, and all 
your good family are very well known to you, 
and it is easier for me to feel them than to ex- 
press them. I have left one of my family and 
will be soon among the other, But the pleasure 
and satisfaction of being in my first will never 
make me forgot my second. 

" My dear wife has fortunately supported 
the fatigues of our voyage perfectly well. She 
has been very sick, but you know as well as 
anybody that seasick never has killed nobody. 

" I pray you, dear father, to do not forget 
me near my friends, and particularly General 
and Mrs. Smith and family, Nancy, Dallas, 
and Dr. McHenry, and remember that you 
solemnly promised me to never show my letters, 
and to burn them after having read it. b '* 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 271 

This letter, Saffell assures us, was in the waste 
paper package already mentioned, endorsed, 
in the handwriting of Madame Bonaparte's 
father, " Bonaparte, Lisbon, April 1805 — re- 
ceived 15th May." Mr. Patterson had the 
precise habits of a man of business. There is no 
reason to believe that he ever showed the letter; 
but he certainly did not burn it. As indeed it 
would have been very wrong for him to do in 
dealing with any son-in-law in Jerome Bona- 
parte's situation ! 

If immediate proof of Napoleon's despotic 
power was needed by the travelers it was 
found in the French guard he at once caused to 
be placed around the Erin and in the tone his 
ambassador was instructed to take towards 
Jerome's wife. This emissary pointedly in- 
quired what he could do for Miss Patterson. 
To which the Baltimore beauty replied with 
spirit, " Tell your master that Madame Bona- 
parte is ambitious, and demands her rights as 
a member of the imperial family." But de- 
manding rights was not to obtain them — 
from Napoleon. Nor was the boy-husband's 
mother allowed to intercede for him, as she 
would have been glad to do. To her the Emperor 
explained himself (in a letter written from the 
neighborhood of Turin, on April 22) in a way 
which, when conveyed to Jerome, left no doubt 
whatever of his brother's inflexibility: " Mr. 



272 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Jerome Bonaparte," this epistle runs, " has 
reached Lisbon with the woman with whom he 
is Hving. I have sent orders to this prodigal 
son to proceed to Milan by way of Perpignan, 
Toulouse, Grenoble, and Turin. I have let him 
know that, if he diverges from this route, he 
will be arrested. Miss Patterson, who is living 
with him, has taken the precaution of bringing 
her brother with her. I have given the order 
that she is to be sent back to America. If 
she evades the orders which I have given, and 
comes to Bordeaux or Paris, she will be taken 
back to Amsterdam, there to be put on board 
the first American vessel. I shall treat this 
young man severely if, at the only interview 
which I shall grant him, he shows himself 
unworthy of the name which he bears, and per- 
sists in wishing to continue his intrigue. If he 
is not prepared to wash out the dishonour which 
he has brought on my name by abandoning his 
flag for a wretched woman, I shall give him up 
forever and perhaps make an example to teach 
young soldiers the sacredness of their duties, 
and the enormity of their crime when they 
desert their flag for a woman. Write to him on 
the supposition that he is going to Milan; tell 
him that I have been a father to him, that his 
duty towards me is sacred, and that he has no 
longer any salvation except in following my in- 
structions. Speak to his sisters that they may 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 273 

write to him also; for when I have pronounced 
his sentence I shall be inflexible, and his life 
will be blasted forever." ^ 

Poor Madame Mere, who had consented to 
the marriage, — if only after the event, — must 
have been sorely perplexed, upon receiving this 
brutal letter, as to her mother's duty! But 
she appears to have obediently counselled Je- 
rome to hasten to meet his brother. So, bidding 
a tender farewell to Elizabeth, the harassed 
young husband set off for Italy through Spain, 
not yet without hope, it would appear, that he 
would be able to bend the imperial will to his 
desire by disclosing the astonishing beauty of 
the girl whom he had made his wife. It chanced 
that, on his way, he met Junot, who had just 
been appointed Minister to Portugal; to him 
and to his wife, who has preserved the incident 
for us, he exhibited a miniature which showed 
Madame Jerome in all her exquisite loveliness 
and declared solemnly that he was strong in 
the justice of his cause and was firmly resolved 
never to abandon this wife he dearly loved and 
in whom " are united all the qualities that can 
render a woman enchanting." With the young 
husband as he rode off, firm in this noble senti- 
ment, was his friend and secretary, Le Camus, 
who at the time impressed Madame Junot favor- 
ably, though she later came to feel that he took 

^ Lecestre, Lettres Inedites de Napoleon, I., p. 47. 



274 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Napoleon's side and helped to persuade Jerome 
that his wife must be abandoned. Le Camus 
knew on which side his bread was buttered. 

From various points along the way the " prod- 
igal son " dispatched to his hard-hearted brother 
letters begging for an opportunity to explain 
his conduct. But the first word he received in 
reply was this, which surely did not tend to 
raise in him any false hopes of forgiveness. 
*' I have received your letter of this morning. 
There are no faults which you have committed 
which may not be effaced in my eyes by a sin- 
cere repentance. Your marriage is null both 
in a religious and legal point of view. I will 
never acknowledge it. Write to Miss Patterson 
to return to the United States, and tell her it 
is not possible to arrange things differently. 
I will grant her a pension of 60,000 francs during 
her life, on condition that, in no event she shall 
bear my name,^ to which she has no right, 
her marriage being non-existent. You yourself 
must make her understand that you have not 
been and are not able to change the nature of 
things. Your marriage being thus annulled 
of your own free will,[!] I will restore to you my 
friendship. ..." 

When Jerome was at length admitted to 
the presence of his brother, Napoleon thus ad- 

^ Yet he always allowed her to sign her receipts for this money 
" Elizabeth Bonaparte "1 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 276 

dressed him: " So, sir, you are the first of the 
family who has shamefully abandoned his post. 
It will require many splendid actions to wipe 
off that stain from your reputation. As to your 
love affair with your little girl, I pay no regard to 
it.'" Napoleon was, however, soon to find out 
that this marriage could not be so easily set 
aside. Though he had now been crowned 
Emperor, he had been only First Consul of 
France at the time of the marriage and so could 
have no control over the members of his family. 
Jerome's mother and his eldest brother, Joseph, 
were the only persons whose consent was neces- 
sary and they concurred in approving the mar- 
riage, which had been celebrated by the highest 
dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church in 
America in accordance with the prescribed rites 
of that body. — But of this more anon. 

What, meanwhile, of the beautiful young 
wife who, a stranger in a strange land, felt her- 
self forced to sail for Amsterdam because ex- 
cluded by Napoleon from every port over which 
he had control .^^ Even at the Dutch city, as the 
event proved, she was not to be admitted. 
Her ship was obliged to turn back to Dover 
where, on May 19, she was finally allowed to 
disembark. And at Camberwell, near London, 
July 7, 1805, her first and only child was born. 
He was named Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte 
after the husband from whom she believed her- 



276 ROMANTIC DAYS 

self only temporarily parted. Five weeks later, 
in a letter to her father, she says of this husband : 
" We imagine that Bonaparte is in some measure 
a prisoner, and we must wait patiently to know 
how he will act; in the meantime it would be 
extremely imprudent for me to go out or see 
anyone, and I must avoid getting into any 
scrapes which I might be led into from thinking 
he would desert me. No matter what I think, 
it is unjust to condemn until we have some cer- 
tainty greater than at present, and my conduct 
shall be such as if I had a perfect reliance on 
him. I think that by returning to the United 
States, it would seem as if I had yielded the 
point, and by next spring everything will be 
decided." 

None the less, mother and child sailed back 
to Baltimore, three months after this letter was 
written; and they were there, occupying a 
position detestable above all others to one of 
her pride, — that of an injured heroine of ro- 
mance — when Napoleon tried (May, 1805) 
unsuccessfully to bribe ^ Pope Pius VII to 
annul Jerome's marriage. In his letter to the 
Pope Napoleon made no attempt to state cor- 
rectly the facts of the marriage. His brother, 
he declared, had been united to a " Protestant 
young woman," after only a month's residence 

^ With the letter went a magnificent gold tiara studded with 
diamonda and rubies. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 277 

in the United States, by '* a Spanish priest 
who had so far forgotten his duties as to pro- 
nounce the benediction." He added that he 
could easily have the union broken in Paris but 
preferred that it should be annulled in Rome 
" on account of the example to sovereign fam- 
ilies marrying Protestants." Cardinal Fesch, 
as well as Napoleon, appears to have believed 
that the Pope would readily enough grant 
Napoleon's request. But this the Pontiff quite 
positively declined to do. He pierced through 
the network of misrepresentations with which 
Napoleon had endeavored to confuse the issues 
of the case, examined all the precedents which 
might be held to have a bearing on the matter, 
and then declared that, glad as he would be to 
oblige Napoleon, he found no reasons whatever 
for annulling a marriage duly performed by 
the Bishop of Baltimore. Marriages between 
Protestants and Catholics, although disap- 
proved of by the Church, are nevertheless ac- 
knowledged as valid, he pointed out. 

Napoleon's own Council of State proved much 
more complaisant, and, in October of the fol- 
lowing year, the American marriage was de- 
clared null ecclesiastically in Paris. In the 
August of 1807 Jerome's flabby hand was 
bestowed upon Sophia-Dorothea-Frederika- 
Catherine of Wurtemberg. None the less, 
this astonishing deserter continued at intervals 



278 ROMANTIC DAYS 

to write to his American wife! After leaving 
her at Lisbon, in April, 1805, he had addressed 
to her frequent and tender letters, repeatedly 
declaring that she was the sole object of his 
love and that for her he would be willing to 
give up even his life. Up to the year 1812, in- 
deed, he continued to write to her, though after 
he had been declared free of his marriage his ex- 
pressed interest was in his son rather than in 
his son's mother. In 1808 he attempted, with 
Napoleon's consent, to bring the young Jerome 
Napoleon to Westphalia. Naturally, Elizabeth 
and her family flatly refused this proposition. 
Which seems only to have whetted the King of 
Westphalia's desire to re-establish connections 
with the American Bonapartes for, in November 
of that same year, he actually wrote to offer 
the woman he had so heartlessly abandoned the 
principality of Smalkalden, in Westphalia, with 
a pension of 200,000 francs a year! She replied 
that, though Westphalia was a large kingdom 
it was not large enough for two queens. More- 
over, she preferred being sheltered under the 
wing of an eagle, she said, to hanging from the 
bill of a goose. The eagle was, of course. Na- 
poleon, who, up to the date of his Fall, kept his 
promise of allowing her 60,000 francs a year. 
This last rebuff kept Jerome silent for three 
years. Then he wrote to her as follows: — " My 
dear Elisa, what a long time it is since I have 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 279 

received any news of you and of my son ! In the 
whole world you could never find a better or 
more tender friend than me. I have many 
things to write to you; but as I can but fear 
that this letter may be intercepted, I limit my- 
self to giving you news of myself and asking you 
for news of you and my son. Be assured that 
all will be arranged sooner or later. The Em- 
peror is certainly the best as he is the greatest 
of men." This letter was signed " Voire affec- 
tionne et bon ami J erome-Napoleon.'^ 

And she really believed him! In spite of her 
contempt for him and in spite of her distrust of 
his honor she all her life long hugged the delusion 
that Jerome really loved her. Yet, characteris- 
tically, the year after Napoleon's downfall, she 
forestalled any attempt this " bon ami " might 
make to claim a share in her fortune by divor- 
cing him under a special act of the legislature of 
Maryland. 

And now, to educate her child " as his rank 
demanded " and to give herself the pleasures 
of that society to which she felt she rightly 
belonged, Elizabeth Patterson again took up 
life in Europe. " Although you have always 
taken me for a fool," she writes her father, 
" that, I assure you, is not my character here. 
. . . Nature never intended me for obscurity." 
The pleasures of Paris, for which she had so 
long sighed in vain, were now enjoyed by her 



280 ROMANTIC DAYS 

to the full. For, though the Empire had fallen, 
Paris was very gay and very brilliant and upon 
this American woman, whose sufferings had 
made her a heroine, the sentimental Frenchmen 
proceeded to pour out a wealth of adulation. 
Louis XVIII expressed a wish to see her at 
Court but she declined to be presented, saying 
that, as she had received a pension from the 
Emperor, she would not appear at the Court of 
his successor, ingratitude not being one of her 
vices. 

With Talleyrand praising her wit, Madame de 
Stael extolling her beauty, and all the leading 
men and women of the day ^ cultivating her 
acquaintance, Madame Bonaparte was at the 
height of her career. To her father, who 
continued to be troubled by her disdain of 
home-pleasure, she wrote, " I am not half 
so foolish as you imagine or I should, per- 
haps, have been more contented. There is 
but one single chance of securing tranquillity 
for the future years which I may have to live, 
and that is to remain in Europe. I can never 
be satisfied in America. . . ."! Of the "ex- 
King of Westphalia " she speaks in this letter 
of 1816 with the utmost indifference. He was 
living at this time at the court of Wiirtemberg. 

^ It was at this time (1814) that she had painted for Mr. James 
Craig, brother of Mrs. Nicholas Biddle, wife of the financier, the 
nainiature by Augustin reproduced in this book. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 281 

Their paths never crossed again, though once 
they met for a moment (in 1822) in the gallery 
of the Pitti Palace in Florence. On seeing her, 
Jerome started and, whispering to the Princess 
of Wurtemberg, " That is my American wife," 
led his second spouse down a side aisle and so 
avoided what might have been an embarrassing 
encounter. 

The only child of this Europe-loving woman 
and of her husband-who-would-be-king greatly 
preferred America, however, to any land be- 
yond the sea and poignantly disappointed his 
mother by marrying an American girl! One, 
too, who lived in Baltimore! " I would rather 
die, than marry any one in Baltimore," she scorn- 
fully declared when told the news, " but if my 
son does not feel as I do upon this subject, of 
course he is quite at liberty to act as he likes 
best. As the woman has money I shall not for- 
bid the marriage. . . ." ^ 

And so the boy who, in 1820, had written 
to his grandfather, *' Since I have been in Europe 
I have dined with princes and princesses and all 
the great people in Europe [he was made much 
of by his father's family as he approached the 
marriageable age], but I have not found a dish 
as much to my taste as the roast beef and beef- 
steaks I ate in South Street "^ came back at 

1 Madame Bonaparte to William Patterson, December, 1829. 
" The home of William Patterson. 



282 ROMANTIC DAYS 

last to found in Baltimore the family of American 
Bonapartes. Inevitably, as has been said, 
they were all devoted Roman Catholics and 
so have done much to build up in the middle 
South the prestige of that Church which had 
served them so well in their time of need. The 
same Pope, Pius VII, who braved the anger of 
Napoleon for the sake of what seemed to him 
right, erected Baltimore, in 1808, into an archi- 
episcopal see, the Archbishop chosen being 
Dr. John Carroll, son of Daniel Carroll of Upper 
Marlboro and cousin of Charles Carroll of 
Carrollton. In 1789 Dr. Carroll had founded 
Georgetown University at Washington; the 
Cathedral at Baltimore was the second monu- 
ment to this good man's zeal and devotion. 

Mrs. Trollope, who was in America in 1829-30 
and visited Baltimore among other cities, has a 
good deal to say in praise of the place, particu- 
larly the Cathedral, " considered by all Americans 
as a magnificent church, though it can scarcely 
be so classed by any one who has seen the 
churches of Europe. Its interior, however, has 
an air of neatness that amounts to elegance. 
The form is a Greek cross, having a dome in 
the centre; . . . On each side of the high altar 
are chapels to the Savior and the Virgin. The 
altars in these as well as the high altar are of 
native marbles of different colours, and some of 
the specimens are very beautiful. The decora- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 283 

tions of the altar are elegant and costly. . . . 
We attended mass in this church the Sunday 
after our arrival and I was perfectly astonished 
at the beauty and splendid appearance of the 
ladies who filled it. Excepting on a very brilliant 
Sunday at the Tuileries I never saw so showy 
a display of morning costume, and I think I never 
saw anywhere so many beautiful women at one 
glance. 

" Baltimore is, I think, one of the handsomest 
cities to approach in the Union," continues this 
usually-adverse critic. " The noble column 
erected to the memory of Washington and the 
Catholic Cathedral with its beautiful dome, 
being built on a commanding eminence are 
seen at a great distance. As you draw nearer 
many other domes and towers become visible, 
and as you enter Baltimore Street, you feel 
that you are arrived in a handsome and populous 
city. ... It has several handsome buildings 
and even the private dwelling-houses have a 
look of magnificence, from the abundance of 
white marble with which many of them are 
adorned. The ample flights of steps and the lofty 
door-frames, are in most of the best houses 
formed of this beautiful material. This has 
been called the city of monuments, from its 
having the stately column erected to the memory 
of General Washington, and which bears a 
colossal statue of him at the top; and another 



284 ROMANTIC DAYS 

pillar of less dimensions recording some vic- 
tory, I forget which." 

The victory which Mrs. Trollope " forgot " 
was the expulsion of the British troops from the 
city — an important incident of the War of 
1812. To the men who perished on this oc- 
casion and during the bombardment of Fort 
McHenry the Battle Monument so called was 
erected. To us this encounter is of especial 
interest because it furnished the inspiration 
for the one really great song of the early Re- 
publican period. I mean, of course, " The 
Star Spangled Banner," the words of which were 
written by Francis Scott Key. 

Key was born in Maryland, August 9, 1780. 
He was the son of John Ross Key, a Revolu- 
tionary officer, and was impregnated from his 
earliest youth with loyalty to the flag he was 
afterward to celebrate. He studied law in the 
office of his uncle, and began to practice, but 
subsequently removed to Washington, where he 
became district attorney for the District of 
Columbia. 

The War of 1812, which his song so nobly 
commemorates^ had for some time seemed to run 
almost entirely in favor of England. Washington 
had been captured and burned, and Baltimore 
itself was threatened with speedy destruction. 
From this latter city, in 1814, under a flag of 
truce, and with proper credentials from Presi- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 285 

dent Madison, young Key set out to procure 
the release of a physician friend, who, though 
a non-combatant, had been taken prisoner and 
was in the hands of Vice-Admiral Cochrane, 
just then planning a concerted attack by land 
and sea upon Fort McHenry, the key to Balti- 
more. Key's arrival could scarcely have been 
more ill timed. But the Admiral agreed to 
release the friend and treated his envoy with 
considerable courtesj^ Only he refused to allow 
the young lawyer to return just then, for fear 
that the projected attack would be betrayed to 
the enemy. 

The bombardment of the fort began on the 
morning of September 13, 1814, and Key was 
obliged to witness it from the ship whose 
guest he had perforce become. The Admiral 
had boasted that he would be able to carry 
McHenry in a few hours, and that the city itself 
must then surely fall. Yet, for all that he threw 
some 1,800 shells, only four of the little party 
within the fort were killed. 

Just about daybreak on the fourteenth the 
firing ceased, and Key and a friend walked the 
deck impatiently, waiting for light that they 
might see the result of the previous day's bom- 
bardment. At last they were rewarded by 
beholding the stars and stripes still floating 
over the American fort. 

At that moving moment, when, through his 



286 ROMANTIC DAYS 

field-glass, Key first caught sight of the proudly 
waving banner still floating over the fort the 
British had not been able to carry, he hastily 
jotted down on the back of a letter he happened 
to have in his pocket, the opening stanzas of 
the poem that was to become so celebrated. 

He finished it on the boat as he was going to 
Baltimore (inasmuch as the attack had failed, 
the Americans were now at liberty to return 
to the city) and he wrote out a good copy in 
the hotel there immediately after his arrival. 
So did he succeed in catching the " rocket's 
red glare." The piece was at first called " The 
Bombardment of Fort McHenry." It was 
printed, together with an account of its com- 
position, in the Baltimore American September 
21 of the same year. The tune to which it 
was and is still sung is " Anacreon in Heaven," 
an air bold, warlike and majestic — even if 
it does try to the breaking point the average 
American voice. 

When " The Star Spangled Banner " was 
sung for the first time in public — at the Holli- 
day Street Theatre — the chorus was led by 
Charles Durang, who had himself been one of 
the little garrison which guarded the six-gun 
battery at North Point. 

Another young poet with whom Baltimore has 
interesting associations is Edgar Allan Poe.^ 
* Poe is buried in Baltimore, too, — in Westminster Churchyard. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 287 

It was here, indeed, that Poe's first love-affair 
ran its ill-starred course. The girl in the case 
was named Mary, and she lived on Essex Street 
in the " old town," not far from the house at 
which Poe, who had then just left West Point, 
was boarding. She used to see him — a slim, 
well-knit figure, tightly encased in a long black 
frock coat, pale and clean-shaven, with a broad, 
white forehead and that look of pain around the 
mouth, which, combined with his wonderful eyes 
and his fascinating manners, made him a verita- 
able hero of romance — going back and forth 
to the office where he then toiled; and to see 
him was to fall in love with him. Virginia 
Clemm was only a child of ten at this time and 
she acted as Cupid's messenger between her 
handsome cousin and the maiden Mary. Long 
afterwards Mary entrusted a full account of 
all this and of the poet's deep and abiding pas- 
sion for her to a kinsman^ and he, treasuring 
the details carefully, gave them to the world 
two years after her death. She and Poe were 
then too much engrossed in their own emotions, 
she said, to talk about the poetic aspirations of 
the young lover ; but he was wont to quote Burns's 
*' Mary " poems to this sweetheart of the same 
name, as they sat together of an evening on the 
wide Baltimore stoop of her home or wandered 
in the moonlight over the sightly hills nearby. 

^See Augustus van Cleef in Harper's Monthly for March, 1889. 



288 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Once, when they were thus walking on a 
summer evening — a night which seemed made 
for lovers, — Poe tried to persuade his sweet- 
heart to go in with him to a minister, whose 
house they were just then passing. " We intend 
to be married sometime, why not now? " he 
urged. But she, knowing he was not yet in 
any position to take upon himself the burden of 
a wife, gently said him nay and led the way 
quickly home. Mary's father, it appears, was 
not at all in favor of the match. And Mary, 
herself, though she loved her handsome young 
adorer, was a good deal afraid of him. For he 
had a quick, passionate temper, scoffed at the 
religion which meant much to her, showed him- 
self possessed of very little self-control — and 
was exceedingly jealous. 

Their first quarrel came about as a result of 
his quite groundless jealousy of a friend of her 
brother's for whom she chanced to be sing- 
ing the poet's favorite song, " Come rest in this 
bosom." While the music was going on, Poe, 
with one hand behind his back, walked up and 
down the room and bit the nails of the other hand 
to the quick as he struggled for self-control. 
Suddenly, utterly beside himself with jealousy, 
he strode to the side of the piano, snatched the 
music from the rack and threw it on the floor! 
Mary, with a tantalizing laugh, sang the song 
through to the end. But there were bitter 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 289 

words, we scarcely need to be told, after the 
friend had gone away. 

The final and decisive quarrel came one night 
when Poe, who had been expected all the eve- 
ning but had failed to appear, arrived about ten 
o'clock, with signs of liquor on him. His sweet- 
heart had seen him nearly every day for a 
year, but never before, she says, had he given 
any evidence of drink. This night, while on 
his way to call upon her, he had fallen in with 
some old West Point friends and they had all 
gone to Barnum's Hotel for a champagne sup- 
per. He was so contrite for having broken his 
engagement that Mary finally consented to 
sit out on the stoop with him for a little while 
before going to bed. But the drink had evi- 
dently gotten into his blood; for, that night, 
he did or said something (even to her relatives 
Mary, as an old lady, would not say what) 
that so shocked and surprised her that she 
ran away from him around to the back of the 
house and quickly made her way up the stairs 
to her mother's room. Even here Poe pursued 
her and but for her mother's sturdy interposi- 
tion might not have been easily sent home. 
For he passionately asserted that the girl was 
"already his wife in the sight of Heaven!" 
and claimed his right to go to her. 

Mary appears to have had a mind and a will 
of her own. For to the stormy letter which 



290 ROMANTIC DAYS 

followed that night's disgraceful scene she paid 
no attention and their lover-like relations came 
definitively to an end. They never met again 
until both were married. 



CHAPTER V 

CHARLESTON 

*' X T is to Charleston that one should go to 
I enjoy American society in all its luxury," 
declared Achille Murat.^ " There the vari- 
ous circles, composed of planters, lawyers and 
physicians, form the most agreeable society I 
have ever known. The manners of the South 
have a perfect elegance; the mind is highly culti- 
vated; and conversation turns upon an infinite 
variety of subjects with spirit, grace and facility." 
The letter in which this warmly enthusiastic 
paragraph about Charleston appears is dated 
1832, the very end of our epoch. But Josiah 
Quincy, who visited Charleston just before the 
Revolution (having come thither from Boston 
" for his health ") had similarly pleasant things 
to say of the town and of its society. 

Mr. Quincy was a close observer and his 
Journal is most interesting. He tells us of his 
amazement at the appearance of the harbor, 
crowded with ships more than any other in 
America; of the town with its picturesque 
buildings; and of the people and their enter- 

^ In Moral and Political Sketch of the United States: London, 1833. 



292 ROMANTIC DAYS 

tainments. He records that he went to a dancing 
assembly where the music was bad and the 
dancing good; to a St. Ceciha concert of which 
he says that it was held in a large and inele- 
gant building withdrawn from the street. Mr. 
David Deas had, he adds, given him a ticket, 
on presenting which he was passed from servant 
to servant and finally ushered in. The music 
was grand, especially the bass viol and French 
horns. The first violinist, a Frenchman, played 
the best solo he had ever heard. His salary 
was five hundred guineas. Most of the per- 
formers were gentlemen amateurs. He comments 
on the richness of dress of both ladies and gentle- 
men; says that there were two hundred and 
fifty ladies present and it was called no great 
number. The ladies are " in taciturnity during 
the performance greatly before our [Boston] 
ladies; in noise and flirtation after the music 
is over, pretty much on a par. If our ladies 
have any advantage, it is in white and red, 
vivacity and spirit. The gentlemen many of 
them dressed with elegance and richness un- 
common with us. Many with swords on." 

To Lord Charles Greville Montagu, the 
Governor, who was sailing the next day for 
England Mr. Quincy was duly introduced. 
There appears to have been absolutely no bitter- 
ness in Charleston against the mother country. 
And then Mr. Quincy went to a dinner at Miles 





I-+' 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 293 

Brewton's " with a large company, — a most 
superb house said to have cost him £8000 
sterhng." A handsome bird, probably a macaw, 
was in the room during dinner, and everything 
was very comfortable — even luxurious. Mr. 
Quincy went to the races, too. " Spent this 
day, March 3d," he writes, " in viewing horses, 
riding over the town, and receiving complimen- 
tary visits." The New England gentleman adds 
proudly that, besides seeing at the races a fine 
collection of excellent and very high-priced 
horses, he " was let a little into a singular art 
and mystery of the turf." Obviously he, like 
Achille Murat, found the hospitable Southern- 
ers highly agreeable people. As indeed why 
should they not be.'^ Charleston was in a 
very prosperous and happy condition just then. 
Commerce was flourishing, and the interior of 
the State was gradually filling up and forming, 
as it were, a background for the metropolis. 
Earlier in the city's history the Spaniards and 
the Indians had been troublesome, but now all 
fear of them was removed and peace reigned 
at home and abroad. 

To be sure, the passage of the Stamp Act had 
aroused resistance here as in every other self- 
respecting city of the Colonies. And w^hen all 
the taxes were finally removed — except that 
on tea — Charleston folk promptly stored their 
consignments of tea in damp cellars and pro- 



294 ROMANTIC DAYS 

hibited the men to whom this commodity had 
been billed from offering it for sale. Armed 
resistance to the power of Great Britain fol- 
lowed soon after this, and on June 28, 1776, 
the memorable battle of Fort Moultrie was 
fought. To follow the Revolutionary War as 
it dragged itself painfully along in this southern 
city is no part of our plan. Yet it would be a 
great pity to pass without mention the particu- 
larly terrible story of Colonel Hayne. The 
whole country was struck with consternation 
when it first heard of this brave soldier's danger, 
and it became frozen with horror ere the tale's 
last chapter was told. For Hayne was a planter 
of good family and high character who had com- 
manded a troop of horse during the war. 
When Charleston capitulated his company was 
disbanded and, like his comrades, he accepted 
the proffered parole and retired to his plantation. 
Soon, however, the parole was revoked and the 
cruel question put to him, " Will you or will 
you not become the subject of his Majesty .^^ " 
Hayne promptly answered that he would not; 
but the British were especially anxious to secure 
his allegiance because of the great influence 
he possessed in his own neighborhood, and, first 
bribes and then threats were used to make him 
answer the query in the affirmative. Mean- 
while his domestic circumstances were painful 
in the extreme, so painful that, for the nonce, 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 295 

he had little inclination to enroll himself with 
either army. For one child had died, two others 
were desperately ill, and his wife's life was de- 
spaired of. 

While things at home were in this condition 
he was summoned to appear in all haste before 
the commandant at Charleston and there he 
was told that his liberty depended upon his 
signing a declaration that he acknowledged 
himself a British subject; yet Colonel Patterson 
added that this would not commit him to bear- 
ing arms against his countrymen. Hayne was 
most unwilling to sign such a paper, but, in 
order to return to his dying wife, he did put 
his name to the document taking the precaution, 
however, to leave with his friend, Dr. Ramsay, 
another paper in which he declared that the 
signature to the hated bond had been " forced 
on him by hard necessity." " I will never bear 
arms against my country," he said further; 
" my masters can require no service of me but 
what is enjoined by the old militia law of the 
Province, which substitutes a fine in lieu of 
personal service. This I will pay as the price of 
my protection. If my conduct should be cen- 
sured by my countrymen, I beg that you will 
remember this conversation, and bear witness 
for me that I do not mean to desert the cause of 
America." 

The harassed man thereupon returned to 



296 ROMANTIC DAYS 

his family. Some time after his wife died. 
Then, once again, Hayne was threatened with 
imprisonment unless he joined the British 
army. Indignant at this breach of faith and 
considering himself released by it from obliga- 
tion to his promise, Hayne accepted a commis- 
sion in the American army, raised a company 
of his neighbors, and began a vigorous campaign. 
In the course of a bold expedition he was cap- 
tured and tried, as a traitor, by a hastily 
gathered court-martial, which summarily con- 
demned him to death. The horror which spread 
over the country, when the news of his sentence 
was announced, is indescribable. In Charleston 
itself petitions signed by both Whigs and Tories 
and by women as well as men were offered in 
his behalf. In the large drawing-room of the 
Brewton House the sister of the condemned 
man's dead wife knelt, with his little children, 
to implore Lord Rawdon for mercy; and even 
the Lieutenant-Governor, who bad lately re- 
turned from England ill unto death with an 
agonizing disease, had himself carried on a 
litter into the presence of his Lordship to ask 
the boon of life for Hayne. But to each and all 
Rawdon was obdurate. He would not even 
grant the request of the British oJBSicers that 
Hayne should be accorded the death of a soldier 
instead of the punishment of a spy. 

Even more cruel than the refusal of all these 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 297 

requests was the failure, on the part of the gov- 
erning powers, to let the prisoner know what 
manner of death awaited him. Not until he had 
passed the town gates in King Street on his 
way from the prison to the place of execution 
did he learn, by coming face to face with the 
gibbet, the shameful death which was to be his! 
Yet it was with a firm step that he ascended 
the cart, with a quiet voice that he repeated 
after the clergyman the few prayers chosen for 
the occasion, and with a gesture full of dignity 
that he himself gave the signal to the hangman. 
No wonder this man's name is always coupled 
in his native State with the word, " martyr." 

Charleston had been one of the earliest cities 
to suffer from the declaration of war with Great 
Britain and it was one of the very last to be 
freed from the duty and necessity of fighting. 
The occupation of the city by the enemy lasted 
until December, 1782. Then, the very day the 
redcoats marched out, the Americans marched 
in. Moultrie, who was of the latter company, — 
and who had the good luck to be there only 
because he had been exchanged for General 
Burgoyne, — records, " It was a proud day 
for me and I felt myself much elated at seeing 
the balconies, the doors and windows crowded 
with the patriotick fair, the aged citizens and 
others congratulating us on our return home, 
saying * God bless you, gentlemen,' — * You 



298 ROMANTIC DAYS 

are welcome, gentlemen.' Both citizens and 
soldiers shed tears of joy. It was an ample 
reward for the triumphant soldiers, after all 
the hazards and fatigues of war which they had 
gone through, to be the instrument of releasing 
friends and fellow-citizens from captivity and 
restoring them to their liberties and the posses- 
sion of their city and country again." 

But the town, alas! which, in 1778 had been 
a thriving, prosperous place, each house of which 
rejoiced in its own yard and garden, was now a 
pile of ugly ruins. The plantations, too, were 
pictures of desolation. And no man could say 
where the money which should restore prosperity 
was to come from. Rice proved to be the prod- 
uct which spelled release from poverty in this 
particular section of the South -land. And then, 
after tide-water rice, came cotton. Ralph Izard, 
as early as 1774, had seen the possibilities which 
lay in the cultivation of cotton, and now many 
another land-owner saw them, also. 

Soon prosperity was actually at hand ! Plenty 
of evidence can be found from the pages of 
travelers that, by 1790, Charleston was again 
a very pretty place of residence. Though the 
houses were many of them of wood, they were 
large and airy, and the fashion of having piazzas 
was becoming almost universal. The streets, 
to be sure, were narrow — purposely so — in 
order that the sun might be excluded. But this 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 299 

worked to the advantage of those householders 
who chanced not to command any piazza. 
One fine old gentleman was always accustomed 
to take his tea, in fine summer weather, on the 
broad sidewalk in front of his door. After the 
table had been brought out and arranged, pass- . 
ing friends would stop for a cup and a chat. 
Others, who chanced to be walking that way, 
crossed the street and went by on the other side. 
Charleston had good manners. 

For Washington's Southern tour in 1791 the 
city, of course, put on its very best bib and tucker. 
The house in which he was entertained then be- 
longed to Thomas Heyward and had been rented 
and handsomely furnished by the authorities 
for the occasion. From it the President made 
a little journey to visit the fortifications, and to 
it he returned after numerous breakfasts, din- 
ners and balls, all of which he scrupulously re- 
corded in his journal. 

'' Went to a concert where were 400 ladies, 
the number and appearance of wch exceeded 
anything I had ever seen." 

" Breakfast with Mrs. Rutledge, lady of 
Chief Justice, then absent on the Circuit. 
Dinner with gentlemen of the Cincinnati." 

'* Was visited about two o'clock by a great 
number of the most respectable ladies of Charles- 
ton, the first honour of the kind I had ever ex- 
perienced, as flatt^ing as singular." 



300 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Moreover, there was a state dinner at the 
Exchange, and at the City Hall a concert and 
ball. For this last occasion the ladies self- 
sacrificingly wore " fillets of white riband in- 
terwoven in their head-dress with the head of 
Washington painted on them, and the words, 
' Long live the President,' in gilt letters. Every 
hand that could hold a pencil, professional or 
amateur, was enlisted to furnish these ban- 
deaux." ^ And on Sunday the guest of honor 
attended divine service at both the historic 
churches of the town. In the morning St. 
Philip's ^ welcomed him; in the afternoon St. 
Michael's. The pew which he occupied in the 
latter edifice is preserved inviolate unto this day. 

To the Cincinnati of Charleston, with whose 
members Washington, in his Diary, mentions 
dining in the course of this visit, is due great 
credit for their long-continued and finally suc- 
cessful efforts to bring into disrepute the costly 
custom of duelling. How strongly entrenched 
the custom was is shown by the fact that when, 

^ Reminiscences of Charleston: Charles Fraser. 

2 St. Philip's Parish (the first and oldest ia South Carolina and 
coeval with the Colony) dates from 1670, a. d. There have been 
three St. Philip's parish churches, viz: the first stood where St. 
Michael's now stands; the second, provided for by the act of March 
1, 1710-11, and standing where the present one now stands, was com- 
pleted in 1723 and was destroyed by fire m 1835, whereupon the 
third and present one was erected. St. Michael's Parish was es- 
tablished by the act of June 14, 1751, and its church (still standing) 
was completed La 1761. See Dalcho's History of the Church in South 
Carolina. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 301 

after Hamilton's death, General Charles Cotes- 
worth Pinckney, as the President of the Cincin- 
nati, addressed a letter to the President of the 
State Society protesting at this " barbarous 
custom " to which General Hamilton had " fallen 
a victim," nothing whatever came of the matter. 
This, too, in spite of the fact that every man 
felt the deep truth of General Pinckney 's 
assertion, " Duelling is no criterion of bravery, 
for I have seen cowards fight duels, and I am 
convinced real courage may often be better 
shown in the refusal than in the acceptance of 
a challenge. If the Society of the Cincinnati," 
he insisted, " were to declare their abhorrence 
of this practice, and announce the determination 
of all their members to discourage it as far as 
they had influence, and on no account either 
to send or to accept a challenge, it might tend 
to annul this odious custom." Yet it was not 
until a whole quarter of a century later, when 
General Thomas Pinckney had succeeded his 
brother as President-general of the society, 
that a quarrel such as would ordinarily have 
called for a duel was for the first time settled 
by a " Court of Honor " composed of members 
of the Cincinnati. The precedent thus estab- 
lished appears to have had some effect for 
duelling gradually became less frequent, " until 
it fell in 1866 with the civilization of which it 
was a part." 



302 ROMANTIC DAYS 

To the doctrines disseminated by the French 
Revolution Charleston was eagerly responsive 
the brave men who had had a large share in 
the struggle of 1776 trustfully thinking that 
Lafayette was to be another Washington and 
France a power through which Europe should 
be regenerated. At public entertainments the 
American and French colors often waved to- 
gether and the tri-colored cockade was generally 
worn. Many Jacobin clubs were formed; the 
Due de Liancourt-Rochefoucauld, in his pub- 
lished travels, has an amused reference to the 
fact that " the principles of the French dema- 
gogues predominated long in Charleston." Mr. 
Charles Fraser, whose delightful Reminiscences 
give us the best available picture of Charleston's 
early Republican enthusiasms, recalls that a 
grand civic pageant took place January 1, 
1793, in honor of the National Assembly of 
France. " So great was the public enthusiasm," 
he declares, '* that, on the eve of that day, the 
bells of St. Michael's were chimed, and a salute of 
thirteen guns fired by the artillery. The same 
honours were repeated on the morning following, 
and in the course of the day, a procession of 
French and American citizens paraded the streets 
of Charleston, headed by the Governor. . . . 
In passing before the French Protestant Church ^ 

1 The French Protestant Church belongs to the very early history 
of Charleston. A building in which the Huguenot form of worship 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 303 

the Consul, as an expiation for the persecutions 
of Louis XIV against that church, took off his 
hat, and saluted with the national colours. 
On arriving at St. Phihp's Church, the place 
appointed for the religious ceremonies of the 
day, two salutes were fired by the regiment of 
infantry, an animated oration was delivered 
by the Rev. Mr. Coste, the Te Deum was sung, 
and the service closed by the Hymne de Marseil- 
lois, accompanied with the organ. In the after- 
noon a grand fete was given at William's Coffee- 
house, prepared for two hundred and fifty per- 
sons. Two sets of toasts, French and English, 
were drunk." As for July 14, the anniversary 
of the destruction of the Bastille, that was cele- 
brated as if it were an American festival ! 

When this ardent faith in the beneficence of 
the Revolution was perforce violently shaken 
by the acts of the demagogues, Charlestonians 
actually suffered. The banishment of Lafayette 
stirred people to their depths, for it was well 
remembered that he had been America's great 
friend in time of need. The greatest indignation 
was, indeed, felt in Charleston because Washing- 
ton did not at once demand the release of this 
great and good man. And it was a young Caro- 

was carried on has stood on the southeast comer of Church and 
Queen Streets ever since 1687 (about). The first building was des- 
troyed by fire in 1740, a second met the same fate in 1796 but was 
rebuilt in 1797. This last edifice was remodeled and enlarged in 
1845. 



304 ROMANTIC DAYS 

linian, Francis Kinloch Huger,^ who made that 
gallant attempt to liberate the prisoner at 
Olmutz which forms one of the most thrilling 
chapters of early Republican history. 

Huger was only a child of three when he first 
met Lafayette; by chance, it was at his father's 
house, on North Island, South Carolina, that 
the young Frenchman passed the first night of 
his stay in America. (He and the Baron de 
Kalb had taken to the boats, from the vessel 
which had brought them across the Atlantic, 
in order to avoid British cruisers.) This was in 
1776. The attempted rescue of Lafayette came 
in 1794, when Huger had just attained his 
majority. The profession chosen by the brave 
young South Carolinian was that of a surgeon 
and he thus came into contact at Vienna with 
the clever young physician of Hanover, Dr. 
Bollmann, who had been engaged by friends of 
Lafayette to discover the latter's prison and at- 
tempt his rescue. Bollmann had already been at 
work on the matter for a year when he fell in 
with Huger, and he had then just succeeded 
in establishing connections with the famous 
prisoner at Olmutz by means of some French 
books, on the margins of which a plan of escape 
had been written in lemon -juice characters found 
to be easily legible upon being held to the fire. 

^ Huger was born in Charleston in 1773 and died there in 1855. 
In 1811 he married the daughter of General Thomas Pinckney. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 305 

When Huger was told the plan that had been 
made to rescue Lafayette some day when he 
should be out riding he was eager to help. 
Accordingly, he and Bollmann hired a post- 
chaise and a servant, besides two horses, one of 
which had been trained to carry double. Then 
they made the journey of one hundred and fifty 
miles to Olmutz. Arriving there the servant 
with the chaise was dispatched to Hoff, a town 
about twenty -five miles from Olmutz on the road 
they hoped soon to be traveling with Lafayette 
under their care. Then, at the hour when they 
knew the prisoner was given his airing, the 
rescuers started to meet him. They recognized 
him easily by his pre-arranged gesture (raising 
his hat and wiping his forehead with his hand- 
kerchief), quickly overpowered the guard who 
kept at his side as he alighted to take his exercise, 
and then Huger, bidding the General mount one 
of the horses, directed him to " Go to Hoff." 
Unfortunately this direction was given in Eng- 
lish and was understood by Lafayette to be 
" Go off." Obediently, he let his horse canter 
slowly away. 

Thus very valuable moments were lost, mo- 
ments during which the mounted soldier, who 
had been riding behind the prisoner's carriage, 
was able to gallop back and report the rescue. 
Unhappily, too, Lafayette had taken the horse 
trained to carry double, so that either Bollmann 



306 ROMANTIC DAYS 

or Huger must needs waive the chance of escape. 
The latter insisted that the Hanoverian, who 
spoke German, could most effectively serve 
Lafayette, and so gave up to him the remaining 
horse. But the sacrifice was of no avail for 
all three men were soon captured, Huger 
being chained for many days to the floor of 
a dungeon from which all light had been ex- 
cluded, and denied any opportunity to commu- 
nicate with the outside world. After eight 
months he and Bollmann were released, the 
judges having been bribed by their friends. 
Lafayette was not set free for another three 
years. 

Another highly creditable connection of the 
city with the French Revolution was the ready 
and generous help accorded by Charlestonians 
to the St. Domingo refugees who had been 
driven out of their island by the horrible mas- 
sacres of 1792. The mother of Joseph Jefferson 
was one of these refugees. Her charming face 
and gentle manners, as a child of ten, attracted 
the attention of the daughter of General Mac- 
pherson into whose home she was taken and 
tenderly cared for until she arrived at woman's 
estate. To this great increase of French pop- 
ulation in Charleston and the natural fondness 
which the French people have for theatricals 
was due the establishment of a French theatre 
in the town, in 1794, with a good company of 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 307 

comedians, pantomimists, rope-dancers and the 
like. A rendering of the Marseillaise in which 
the audience joined was long a feature here. 
Later, the building was converted into a public 
hall for concerts and dancing assemblies and 
here, so long as it continued to be a musical 
society, met the St. Cecilia. 

This musical organization, which Mr. Quincy 
speaks of having enjoyed when he was in Charles- 
ton before the Revolution, is as peculiarly 
a product of the city we are now considering 
as were the Wistar parties a distinctly Phila- 
delphian institution. It met on a Thursday 
" Thursday being St. Cecilia's day." It was 
begun in the year 1737 as an amateur concert 
society and amateurs long continued to com- 
pose the bulk of its membership; General C. C. 
Pinckney and Mr. Ralph Izard were both of 
the St. Cecilia in their youth. The society 
was formally organized in 1762 and has gone on to 
the present day excepting during the war periods. 

When it was learned that President Monroe 
was to visit Charleston the St. Cecilia attempted 
to muster all its forces to do him honor; but 
e\ddently the club's musical ardor had now de- 
clined, for the committee was obliged to report 
that only five performers could be found for 
a concert — and it was proposed to give a 
ball instead. For this occasion a combination 
appears to have been effected, but in 1822 the 



308 ROMANTIC DAYS 

concert was definitely abandoned and the ball 
came in to take its place. Membership in this 
interesting organization is by election at annual 
meetings and the fact that an aspirant's father 
or grandfather was formerly a member greatly 
helps his chances. But worthy " new " people 
are by no means excluded and when a man is 
once elected the names of the ladies of his house- 
hold are forthwith placed upon the St. Cecilia's 
list there to remain until the day of their death 
unless they have previously left the city. The 
managers of the organization are elected by 
the general membership and upon them rests 
all the care of the three balls given each season, 
the first in January and the second and third 
in February, the latter being carefully arranged 
to avoid Lent. A charming feature is that at 
such balls the latest bride is always taken down 
to supper by the president. These suppers are 
very elegantly served, for the Society owns its 
own plate, damask, china and glass and the serv- 
ants of members are enlisted to serve as waiters. 
Another unique social institution of Charles- 
ton, which continued through many years, were 
the breakfasts given by Mr. Poinsett, a gentle- 
man interesting to all Americans as the person 
for whom the gorgeous Poinsettia was named. 
The only son of a wealthy physician of Huguenot 
descent this gracious host was a citizen of the 
world in the finest meaning of the words. But 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 309 

he was a good American before everything else 
and was glad to return to America, and represent 
his city in Congress establishing himself, during 
the intervals of the sessions, in a small cottage 
surrounded by trees and by the flowers which 
were the passion of his life. His breakfasts, 
given once a week, were deservedly famous for 
only men who knew how to talk and women who 
were endowed with either beauty or charm or 
both were bidden. Late in life Mr. Poinsett 
married a widow who possessed both wealth and 
good looks and was an Izard besides! Thence- 
forth he was more than ever a prominent figure 
in the life of his native town. 

A town in which a meal so little promising 
as breakfast could be made to take high social 
rank would naturally offer very great opportu- 
nities to the amenities which cluster about the 
tea-table. " In the days of the early Republic 
it was a common custom for ladies at Charleston 
to send their compliments to a friend, soon 
after breakfast, saying that if not engaged in 
the evening, they would take tea with her," 
Mr. Fraser recalls. He says, also, that he once 
heard these same worthy matrons compared, 
as they sat side by side in a row at a ball, to 
" a Roman Senate "! Yet they were not merely 
chaperons. For, formerly, dancing was not the 
exclusive amusement of the young. At the 
first public assembly after the Revolutionary 



310 ROMANTIC DAYS 

War the ball was opened by a minuet between 
General Moultrie, in full regimentals, and " a 
lady of suitable years," whom he afterwards 
married. General Moultrie was nat a day less 
than fifty -three at this time; what the lady's 
" suitable years " totalled we are not informed. 
While we are speaking of dancing it may be 
noted that, in Charleston, at this period was 
to be seen that same tendency to the extremely 
decollete in ball gowns of which we have heard 
in connection with Washington society and 
certain Baltimore belles. But, as if to compen- 
sate for undressed shoulders, the head was 
literally burdened with head-dress, frizzes and 
wigs. And that despite the fact that it was 
well known that there was a direct relation 
between the prevalence of the guillotine in 
France and the vogue of wigs in Charleston ! 

By the time it had become well reestablished 
in prosperity Charleston began to have its 
" season " even as London has. But at a 
different time of year. For in this southern 
city the call to town-gaiety came at the end of 
January, when a joyous succession of St. Cecilias, 
Dancing Assembles and Philharmonic Concerts 
made life in the city seem exceedingly good to 
the young people, wWle, for " father," there was 
the Jockey Ball in the midst of a week of races. 
These races long made Charleston the centre 
of travel for all who could afford to travel. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 311 

Partly, very likely, because of the personal 
interest everywhere taken by the planters in 
the raising and training of horses the enthu- 
siasm produced by this annual festival was such 
as can scarcely be conceived today. " Schools 
were dismissed," Mr. Fraser tells us, " and the 
Courts were adjourned. Clergymen thought 
it no impropriety to see a well-contested race; 
and if grave physicians played truant, they were 
sure to be found in the crowd on the race- 
ground. Every stable in the city was emptied 
— every saddle and bridle put into requisition, 
and those who could procure neither horse, 
saddle nor bridle enlisted as pedestrians. The 
concourse itself presented quite a showy and 
animated spectacle, from the number of well- 
dressed and well-mounted horsemen, and from 
the display of equipages and liveries. The 
whole week was devoted to pleasure and the 
interchanges of conviviality; nor were the 
ladies unnoticed, for the Race ball, given to 
them by the Jockey Club, was always the most 
splendid of the season." 

It should not, however, be thought that this 
festival of the races had only its frivolous and 
self-indulgent side. It was, also, of tremendous 
commercial importance. For it was in race- 
week that the planter settled accounts with his 
factor. The factor seems to have been the pur- 
chasing agent of the country family, as well as 



312 ROMANTIC DAYS 

of his immediate employer, the planter. And 
he was likewise the selling agent, receiving the 
rice and cotton, when sent to market, and get- 
ting for it the best possible price from the mer- 
chant to whom he sold it. Moreover, the factor 
kept all the accounts connected with the plan- 
tation and did what he could to make them 
understood by his over-lord. That was a day 
when many a planter could read Homer and 
make a speech to explain the Constitution; 
but from the very nature of things he could 
not solve correctly a simple problem of arith- 
metic. This, then, and pretty much every- 
thing else that was hard or disagreeable, fell 
to the lot of the factor. Small wonder that 
Carolina's gentlemen not infrequently found 
their affairs in a hopeless muddle at some stage 
or other of their lives. To trust an employe is 
all very well; but constantly to deny him either 
cooperation or intelligent interest is to put a 
premium upon dishonesty. 

Let us now, however, return to the planter's 
country-home as the planter himself was wont 
to do directly his week of racing was over. By 
the first of March he was back on his ancestral 
acres and by April the ladies were there, too, 
eager to enjoy the coming of spring in the country. 
But by May they would have to go away again, 
for the streams and ponds of the lowlands would 
then be looking green and ugly and, in a day 




< 03 




THEODOSIA BURR. 

From (he portrait hij St. Memin. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 313 

when the virtues of quinine were not yet under- 
stood, that meant malaria. Not until the first 
frost had fallen would their country -homes now 
see the women. But from November to Jan- 
uary they would be there again, enjoying to 
the utmost the pleasures of a country winter 
out of doors. And Christmas, for which the 
Legislature always adjourned, was the culmi- 
nating home-festival of the year. 

A goodly, gracious life, but one so very differ- 
ent from that of the North that a girl coming 
to it as a bride ^ might quite conceivably find 
rather difficult the matter of adjusting herself 
to its trying climate and to its constant comings 
and goings. Theodosia Burr, who married 
Joseph Alston and went to Charleston to live, 
early in the nineteenth century, once said quite 
frankly that only her great love for her husband 
availed to make the city endurable to her. 

^ Brides, of course, differed then as now in their attitude towards 
country life. Mrs. Ralph Izard, who had been Alice de Lancey, a 
belle of New York, — before she married and went to live on her 
husband's southern plantation " The Elms," — appears to have 
greatly enjoyed herself in her new home. It is told of her that once, 
when her husband was ill, she personally managed his large estate 
and wrote his business letters, besides taking care of three families of 
children. No man more fully enjoyed Washington's confidence than 
Ralph Izard. During the Revolutionary struggle the Izards were 
out of the country, however, living in London, in Paris and in Rome. 
It was in the last named city that the striking portrait, herewith 
reproduced, was made of them by John Singleton Copley. From 
1789-95 Ralph Izard represented his native State in the United 
States Senate. He died in South Bay, near Charleston, in 1804, 
aged 62. 



314 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Even before her marriage we find her inveigh- 
ing against local conditions in a fashion quite 
unusual in love-letters. But then, Theodosia 
Burr was an exceptional person in more ways 
than one. 

Highly exceptional was she, of course, in the 
passionate devotion she cherished for her father 
and in the way in which she believed in him and 
stuck to him through the many trying chapters 
of his extraordinary career. Parton says that 
it was the conviction that there must have been 
much good in the man who could inspire such 
love as Theodosia Alston gave Aaron Burr which 
first interested him to write the latter's biog- 
raphy. Nowadays, of course, we are constantly 
discovering that Burr was far from being the 
unmitigated villain American historians have too 
long declared him.^ 

The twelve years of Burr's married life un- 
questionably mark the brightest and best 
period of his career. He often said that Theo- 
dosia's mother, who had been the Widow Prevost 
when he married her, was the best woman and 
the finest lady he had ever known; history has 
never denied that little Theodosia was exceed- 
ingly fortunate in the matter of this parent. 

^ One ancient myth about a girl Burr is usually credited with 
having " ruined on a wager " has been effectually exploded, within 
ten years, by V. Lansing Collins, librarian at Princefon University. 
See New York Sun, January 26, 1902, for article copied from the 
Princeton Alumni Weekly. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 315 

The child was born at Albany in the summer of 
1783, Burr's residence then being in New York's 
capital because of his political duties there. 
The following winter the family moved to New 
York and established a home in Maiden Lane, 
" the rent to commence when the troops leave 
the city." That Burr was very prosperous at 
this period is clear from the fact that the rent 
thus referred to came to something like two 
hundred pounds a year. Soon an even better 
house was taken, a mansion at the corner of 
Cedar and Nassau Streets surrounded by a 
luxurious garden in which the little Theodosia 
played happily for several years. 

Charles Lamb once said that babies merely 
as babies have no right to our regard, adding 
that every child has a character of his own and 
should be judged by that. Aaron Burr, who 
came of a long line of schoolmasters and had 
the pedagogical instinct very strongly developed, 
seems to have been convinced of the truth of 
this. For his little daughter had scarcely passed 
babyhood when he began to mould her into the 
lovely woman she afterwards became. His 
absorbing interest in her was naturally greatly 
facilitated by her passionate devotion to him. 
We find from one of her mother's letters to the 
absent husband that their daughter, then only 
two years old, " cannot hear you spoken of 
without an apparent melancholy; insomuch 



316 ROMANTIC DAYS 

that her nurse is obliged to exert her invention 
to divert her, and myself avoid to mention you 
in her presence. She was one day indifferent 
to everything but your name. Her attachment 
is not of a common nature; though this was 
my opinion I avoided the remark, when Mr. 
Grant observed it to me as a singular instance." 

The letters which passed between Burr and 
his wife during these years of Theodosia's 
childhood when, from the nature of his work, 
he was obliged to be much away from home, 
are full of thought about the education of this 
gifted child. Ere she is six her father directs that 
her writing and arithmetic must by no means 
be neglected and, a fortnight later, we find him 
giving orders that she be drilled two or three 
hours a day at French and arithmetic. That the 
child might overwork seems never to have oc- 
curred to these devoted parents. Yet to us, as 
we read, it seems somewhat excessive that, in 
July weather, a little girl of eight should be 
" writing and ciphering from five in the morn- 
ing to eight, and also the same hours in the 
evening." 

After Burr had purchased Richmond Hill 
riding occupied some of the hours Theodosia 
had previously given over to ciphering and many 
poorer children looked after her with envy as 
she trotted about on her pretty pony followed 
by a devoted slave. Then and for many years 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 317 

she was a child of affluence. Not until she had 
left her father's house, indeed, did a shadow of 
misfortune fall on it or her. Except — it should 
immediately be added, — the death in 1794 of 
Mrs. Burr after a painful and lingering illness. 
If we needed further proof that Burr's love for 
this wife was compounded of friendship as 
well as of passion we have only to read a single 
one of his letters to her — and there are many 
of similar tone — which he sent from Phila- 
delphia — where he was obliged to live, because 
then a senator — the year before her death. 
" It was a knowledge of your mind," he there 
says, " which first inspired me with a respect 
for that of your sex. I admit, with some regret, 
I confess, that the ideas which you have often 
heard me express in favor of female intellectual 
powers are founded on what I have imagined, 
more than what I have seen, except in you.'' 
A week before he had written, " Cursed effects 
of fashionable education, of which both sexes 
are the advocates, and yours eminently the vic- 
tims! If I could foresee that Theo would be- 
come a mere fashionable woman, with all the 
attendant frivolity and vacuity of mind, adorned 
with whatever grace and allurem.ent, I would 
earnestly pray God to take her forthwith hence. 
But I yet hope by her to convince the world 
what neither sex appears to believe — that 
women have souls." 



318 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Surely it was not a mere libertine who wrote 
that. Nor a libertine who sat up all night a 
week later, in Philadelphia, reading the revolu- 
tionary book of the age on Woman's Rights. 
" You have heard me speak of Miss WoUstone- 
craft,'' Burr then wrote his wife, " who has 
done something on the French Revolution; she 
has also written a book entitled ' Vindication 
of the Rights of Woman.' I had heard it spoken 
of with a coldness little calculated to excite at- 
tention; but as I read with avidity and pre- 
possession everything written by a lady, I 
made haste to procure it and spent the last 
night, almost the whole of it, in reading it. 
Be assured that your sex has in her an able ad- 
vocate. It is, in my opinion, a work of genius. 
She has successfully adopted the style of Rous- 
seau's Emilius, and her comments on that work, 
especially what relates to female education, 
contains more sense than all the other criti- 
cisms upon him which I have seen put together. 
I promise myself much pleasure in reading it 
to you." (Burr, like most pedagogical persons, 
had the reading-aloud habit.) 

At eleven Theodosia began the study of 
Greek, and from that time on until her marriage 
her education was as nearly like that of a young 
man as the time of which she was a part would al- 
low. Yet the more distinctly womanly accom- 
plishments were by no means neglected. A 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 319 

young French woman, Natalie I'Age, was taken 
into the family in order that Theodosia might 
have the advantages of French conversation, 
and music had early been included in her 
curriculum, as we find from the following letter 
which she wrote her stepbrother when only 
nine. The letter is refreshingly free from the 
prig-like qualities we might have expected to 
find in a child educated with such extreme 
care. 

" Pelham, October the 20th, 1792. 

" Dear Brother : I hope the mumps have left 
you. Mine left me a week ago. . . . Papa has 
been here and is gone again. He and the French- 
man has had a fray, so he keeps in fine order. 
The day before papa went away we had your 
good pig for diner. Mr. Chapron is in Phila- 
delphia at the point of death with the putrid 
fever, and Mr. Luet, an english music master, 
had an elegant forte-piano which papa bought 
for me: it cost 33 Guineas, and it is just come 
home. 

*' I am tired of affectionate, not of being it 
but of writing it, so I leave it out; I am your 
sister, 

"Theodosia B. Burr." 

The italicized words (and there are several 
more of them in the full letter) are Theodosia's 



320 ROMANTIC DAYS 

own admissions of discovered slips in spelling 
or grammar. According to her father's plan 
she would use these same words and expressions 
again in the next letter she might write, taking 
care, however, not to repeat the original mis- 
takes. 

Parton has said that Mary Wollstonecraft's 
book was fifty years in advance of the time and 
this seems to me a moderate statement. Yet 
Burr immediately recognized the work's value 
and applied to the education of his only child 
the high principles therein advocated. In 
championing the new author's idea that in- 
tellectual rather than sexual intercourse should 
be the thing chiefly sought in marriage — be- 
cause it alone could endow that institution with 
lasting happiness — Burr was but acting on 
the experience of his own married life. Ad- 
mirable as were many of the women whom the 
great and good men of this period had chosen 
for their wives Mrs. Burr perhaps stands alone 
as the intellectual companion of her mate. In 
literary judgment she was quite her husband's 
equal; in moral judgment she was his superior. 
And so he did not fear to let their girl child read 
Horace and Terence in the original at ten, and 
attack the Greek grammar, speak French and 
study Gibbon not long after that date. So it 
came about that Theodosia Burr was the best 
educated woman of her time and country, and 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 321 

one, too, who in other ways satisfied her father's 
ideal of a perfect woman nobly planned. On the 
eve of his duel with Hamilton Burr wrote to 
her, " You have completely satisfied all that 
my heart and affections had hoped for, or ever 
wished." 

When Theodosia was fourteen she took her 
place at the head of her father's household and 
became his constant companion in the intervals 
when his duties admitted of his being at home. 
Her command of the French language enabled 
her to acquit herself with distinction when 
Jerome Bonaparte, Talleyrand or Volney were 
her father's guests. At seventeen, she was a 
recognized belle with many admirers ever in her 
wake. The man who was to capture this prize 
among women was, however, a Charleston youth, 
Joseph Alston, who, though only twenty-two, 
had already studied law and been admitted to 
the bar — this, too, in spite of the fact that he 
was possessed of considerable wealth in his 
own right and needed not to bestir himself. 
It was of the family home of the Alstons, " The 
Oaks," that Josiah Quincy wrote thus ap- 
preciatively in his journal during that visit 
to Charleston in 1773, reference to which has 
been made earlier in this chapter: "March 23. 
— Spent the night at Mr. Joseph Alston's, a 
gentleman of immense income, all of his own 
acquisition. His plantations, negroes, gardens 



322 ROMANTIC DAYS 

etc. are in the best order I have ever seen. He 
has propagated the Lisbon and Wine Island 
grapes with great success. I was entertained 
with true hospitahty and benevolence by his 
family." This Joseph Alston died when his 
namesake and grandson, who was later to marry 
Theodosia Burr, was but a boy. In his will 
was the provision that young Joseph, besides 
inheriting " The Oaks," should be given the 
most liberal possible education. 

Consequently, when Theodosia Burr began to 
quote Aristotle to her lover in order to prop up 
her conviction that " a man should not marry 
until he is six and thirty," that lover, being then 
only two and twenty and very much in love, 
replied in a very long, sufficiently learned but 
withal undeniably ardent letter the gist of 
which was that he did not care a fig what Aris- 
totle had said about this matter, for he wanted 
to marry her right off. Already, however, 
Theodosia had relented. Before his elaborate 
arguments had had time to reach her we find her 
writing that she and her father were to leave 
New York for Albany in about two weeks, re- 
maining there until February 10, after which 
time, she intimates, " my movements will de- 
pend upon my father and you." Joseph Alston 
was no laggard in love. In the New York Com- 
mercial Advertiser oi February 7, 1801, we, there- 
fore, find this notice: 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 323 

" MARRIED— At Albany, on the 2nd instant, 
by the Rev. Mr. Johnson, Joseph Alston of 
South Carolina, to Theodosia Burr, only child 
of Aaron Burr, Esq." 

Before the marriage Theodosia had told her 
lover that some of her friends, who had visited 
Charleston, had described it as a city of yellow 
fever and extreme heat, where the men were so 
absorbed in hunting, gaming and racing that 
the women scarcely ever enjoyed their society 
and had no pleasures but to come together in 
large parties, sip tea and look prim. Alston had 
thereupon sw^orn that he would be ever at her 
side; and events proved that he had not spoken 
falsely. Their marriage was a singularly happy 
one, indeed, and though Theodosia never ceased 
to yearn for her father's companionship, she 
was able to assure her husband " Where you are, 
there is my country, and in you are centred all 
my wishes." Yet she was undoubtedly in 
better health and spirits when at the North; 
the climate of South Carolina did not agree with 
her, try as she would to make the best of it. 
In the sultry summers she fled to the mountains 
and in the winter she was admired, caressed 
and sought after in Charleston not only for 
her husband's and father's sake but also for her 
own. Burr was now Vice-President, of course, 
and at the very height of his popularity. For no 



324 ROMANTIC DAYS 

child ever born in America did the prospects seem 
more brilUant than for his grandson and name- 
sake, born in the home of the Alstons on June 
29, 1802 — just before Theodosia was twenty. 

Theodosia's twenty-first birthday may be 
said to mark the beginning of her years of sad- 
ness. Her father celebrated the day with a 
dinner-party at Richmond Hill for which he 
had her portrait taken down from the wall and 
placed in her chair at the table. " We laughed 
an hour, danced an hour and drank your health," 
he wrote. But before this letter reached her 
the tragedy of Weehawken had been enacted 
and Burr's sun had started to set. In several 
ways, it now developed that the bright prospects 
of Hamilton's slayer were illusory in the extreme. 
His property had been supposed to be worth two 
hundred thousand dollars; but he was found 
to be very deeply in debt. Moreover, his politi- 
cal position, — even before the duel, — was 
scarcely less hollow than his social eminence. 
For Jefferson had determined that Aaron Burr 
should not be his successor in the office of Presi- 
dent. To Theodosia, however, it merely seemed 
that luck was against her father and, of course, 
her womanly loyalty and tenderness was more 
than ever stimulated in his behalf. 

In December, 1805, Burr made the acquaint- 
ance of the Blennerhassetts and enlisted their 
interest, as he had already enlisted that of 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 325 

Alston and Tlieodosia, in his Mexican scheme. 
For years it was supposed that Blennerhassett 
had some deep poHtical reason for wishing to 
join Burr's " conspiracy," but in an article 
not long ago put out, by Therese Blennerhassett 
Adams, ^ a connection, it is disclosed that the 
real reason Blennerhassett so avidly joined in 
the scheme was because he wished to remove 
himself even further from those who knew him : 
Harman Blennerhassett had been forced by his 
marriage with his own niece, the daughter of 
his sister Catherine, to give up his position and 
his patrimony in his own country. And though 
there were only a few on this side of the water 
who knew his sad history, he stood in constant 
dread lest the real facts of the case come to 
the knowledge of his children. For this reason 
he was glad to join Burr. The Blennerhassetts 
were always very happy together, it might here 
be added, and the story that Burr destroyed their 
domestic peace should be branded as another 
of the fictions of history. 

Their story would seem to be sufl&ciently 
strange and startling without recourse to fiction. 
The man, at the age of thirty -one and when heir 
to a splendid estate in Ireland, had been sent 
to escort home from school the daughter of his 
sister. But falling in love with her, he married 
her instead! She was only eighteen at the time 

* Century Magazine, July, 1901. 



326 ROMANTIC DAYS 

and so, of course, was far less blamed than he. 
But she refused to give up the mate her heart 
had chosen and so, selling his property in Ire- 
land, Blennerhassett sailed with her for America. 
The establishment they set up on their island 
in the Ohio represented an investment of $60,000, 
and perhaps the most blameworthy act of Burr's 
life was that, through his Mexican scheme, he 
embarrassed these people who had such great 
need of wealth to soften the sorrows of their life. 
(The Blennerhassetts had five children; in 
these days of " eugenics " there is perhaps no 
need to add that, of the five, not one turned out 
a comfort to the parents. " The fathers have 
eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are 
set on edge.") 

To Theodosia and her husband Burr's arrest, 
as a result of this Mexican venture, came as 
a great shock. They stood valiantly by him, 
however, as he was tried for treason before 
Chief Justice Marshall at Richmond, and their 
loyalty had scarcely less to do than Luther 
Martin's eloquence with Burr's acquittal. Mar- 
tin was one of the foremost geniuses of the Mary- 
land bar at this period and his respect for Mrs. 
Alston was profound. Blennerhassett once said 
in this connection, " I find that Luther Martin's 
idolatrous admiration of Mrs.' Alston is almost 
as excessive as my own, but far more beneficial 
to his interests and injurious to his judgment, 




HARMAN BLENNERHASSETT. 

From a miniature in the possession of Dr. Francis Coffin Martin 
of Boston. 




THE NAG S 



HEAD PORTRAIT OF THEODOSIA BURR (?). 



From the origvnal in the possession of Mrs. John P. Overman, EUzabeth City, North 

Carolina. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 327 

as it is the medium of his blind attachment to 
her father, whose secrets and views, past, present 
and to come, he is and wishes to remain ignorant 
of. Nor can he see a speck in the character of 
Alston, for the best of reasons with him — namely 
that Alston has such a wife." 

But though Burr was acquitted he was a 
persona non grata in America. The following 
year, therefore, he prepared to sail for Europe. 
In advance of his departure, Theodosia journeyed 
to New York for the purpose of arranging that 
the debts due him should come to her. She 
would then remit to him. Burr was gay and 
confident to the last and they parted in high 
spirits — at any rate his spirits were high — 
on June 7, 1808. They never saw each other 
again! That summer Theodosia spent at Sara- 
toga and the following winter she passed in 
retirement in New York. Her father's history, 
during the next four years, may be followed in 
detail by perusing the Diary in which he records 
his adventures in the various courts of Europe. 
To read this book as recently published in full 
for the delectation of bibliophiles, is to under- 
stand the Aaron Burr of the early nineteenth 
century and to catch a glimpse, too, of the man 
he subsequently became. The writer of the 
Diary is a less noble figure than the fond father 
who directed Theodosia's early education. But 
he is by no means a despicable person. He made 



328 ROMANTIC DAYS 

it a rule never to accept an invitation to a 
meal unless he had the means to buy one for 
himself and he held to this even when it meant, 
as it sometimes did, going hungry because re- 
mittances from home had failed to reach him. 
Charles Felton Pidgin has taken the trouble 
to reduce to statistical form the social attentions 
Burr chronicles in the Diary and he finds that 
in four years he had 52 invitations to breakfast, 
199 to dinner, and 67 to luncheon, tea or supper. 
His rides and walks by invitation numbered 
46; there were 166 persons who called upon 
him, and he made 653 visits of a business or 
social nature. So it cannot truthfully be said 
that Burr was either an outcast or a recluse 
during his sojourn in Europe. 

For Theodosia, meanwhile, life was very sad 
indeed. " The world," we find her writing to 
her father, " begins to cool terribly around me. 
You would be surprised how many I supposed 
attached to me have abandoned the sorry losing 
game of disinterested friendship." Besides the 
cooling of old friends Theodosia now for the 
first time experienced real need of money! 
The embargo had reduced the rice planters to 
want and Alston had lost in the Mexican venture 
funds that he would now have been very glad 
to command. (This is the money which he 
forgave Burr in his will.) Moreover, the young 
wife's health was in a precarious state — and 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 329 

the letters from her father were infrequent and 
discouraging. 

Burr would by now have been very glad to 
come home but he found great diflSculty in se- 
curing the necessary passport. The most potent 
factor in facilitating his long-delayed return was 
probably a letter which Theodosia wrote Mrs. 
Madison, in her father's behalf, a few months 
after Madison's elevation to the Presidency. 
Burr, it will be recalled, had introduced Madison 
to the Widow Todd. So at length the exile 
was permitted to sail for home, landing in Boston, 
penniless but with good courage, early in June, 
1812. 

This was to be the saddest year of the man's 
whole life, a year full enough to him of sorrow 
to serve as punishment, were such needed, 
for any good thing he had ever left undone and 
for all the bad deeds — many or few — his 
hot blood and over-sanguine temperament had 
led him to commit. For in the first letter which 
he received, after he arrived in New York, 
he learned that Aaron Burr Alston, his much- 
loved grandson, had ceased to be. And ere he 
had rallied from this blow he learned that the 
ship in which his daughter had sailed from 
Georgetown, South Carolina, to bid him welcome 
home in New York, had been lost at sea, no man 
knowing aught of its mysterious fate! Theo- 
dosia was ill, as has already been said, and her,, 



330 ROMANTIC DAYS 

father, being unable to obtain a satisfactory 
report of her condition, sent down to her a med- 
ical friend, who soon reported, " I have engaged 
a passage to New York for your daughter in 
a pilot-boat that has been out privateering but 
has come in here and is refitting merely to get 
to New York. My only fears are that Governor 
Alston [Theodosia's husband was now the chief 
official of his State] may think the mode of 
conveyance too undignified and object to it; 
but Mrs. Alston is fully bent on going. You 
must not be surprised," this letter concludes, 
" to see her very low, feeble and emaciated. 
Her complaint is an almost incessant nervous 
fever." This was the time, it will be recalled, 
of our second war with England. Theodosia's 
husband, therefore, could not leave his post of 
duty to accompany his wife north, as he would, 
under ordinary circumstances, have done. But 
her maid was with her as was also an old friend 
of her father's. 

They sailed December 30, 1812, but never 
reached the port for which they embarked. 
A violent storm swept the coast on the following 
day and it was long supposed that the Patriot 
with all on board went down off Cape Hatteras. 
Not until weeks and months of despairing si- 
lence had elapsed did husband and father aban- 
don all hope, however; and during this period 
of maddening suspense Aaron Burr acquired a 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 331 

habit which chmg to him to the end of his hfe — 
that of walking on the Battery for hours at 
a time wistfully scanning the horizon for the 
ship that did not come. 

In a letter of farewell to her husband which 
Theodosia had written five years earlier, on an 
occasion when the former was away from home 
and she despondent and ill, there is a passage 
which runs, " Let my father see my son some- 
times. Do not be unkind towards him whom I 
have loved so much. Burn all my papers except 
my father's letters which I beg you to return 
him. Adieu, my sweet boy. Love your father; 
be grateful and affectionate to him while he 
lives; be the pride of his meridian, the support 
of his departing days. Be all that he wishes 
for he made your mother happy." This letter 
was found by Burr, two or three years after 
Theodosia's disappearance, in a chest of her be- 
longings which Alston had sent him, and was 
read, it will easily be understood, with a breaking 
heart. 

And now we come to the strangest and sad- 
dest chapter of Theodosia's whole history, that 
which is often referred to as her " supposed fate." 
For many years, as has been said, it was be- 
lieved that the vessel in which she embarked 
had been lost at sea. But, about 1833, through 
the confession made to his doctor by a dying 
man in Mobile, Alabama, the story first became 



332 ROMANTIC DAYS 

current that the lost vessel had been captured 
by pirates and Mrs. Alston, among others, 
made to " walk the plank." No confirmation 
of this story was obtained at the time and very 
little credence was placed in it. Some forty 
years later, however, Charles Gayarre, author 
of the History of Louisiana and other well- 
known works, put out a novel entitled Fer- 
nando de Lemos, in which the pirate incident 
received fictional treatment. A Dr. Rhine- 
berg is called, in the story, to the dying 
pirate, Dominique You, who, when told that 
his disease leaves him only a few days to live, 
confesses painfully that " on the 3d of January, 
1813, ... in the latitude of Cape Hatteras 
on the coast of North Carolina, I and my fellow- 
pirates had met a small schooner named the 
Patriot, which had been dismantled by a late 
storm. . . . The officers of the vessel were 
slaughtered and thrown overboard with the 
rest of the crew. After this execution my men 
rushed down below and brought up to the deck 
a woman of surpassing beauty, deadly pale, 
but showing no other signs of terror. She looked 
at us with a sort of serene haughtiness, which 
was truly wonderful. She made such an im- 
pression on me, that I can almost fancy her 
now standing in this chamber precisely as 
she stood on that deck. 

" * Who are you? ' I said to her. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 333 

" ' Theodosia Burr, the daughter of Aaron 
Burr, ex-vice-president of the United States, 
and wife of Joseph Alston, governor of South 
Carohna,' came the calm answer." 

And then, having with difficulty restrained his 
men from visiting upon poor Theodosia a fate 
worse than death, the pirate in this story con- 
tinues, " I had the plank laid out. She stepped 
on it and descended into the sea with graceful 
composure, as if she had been alighting from a 
carriage." 

Rather surprisingly, the incorporation of this 
incident into a widely-circulated romance ap- 
pears not to have had much influence upon the 
public mind. It did, however, have the effect of 
bringing to public attention, in 1879, through the 
Washington Post, the following story, vouched 
for by Mrs. Stella Edwards Pierpont Drake: "In 
1850, an old man,^ who, years before, had been 
a sailor, an occupant of the Cass County Poor- 
house, Cassopolis, Michigan, in conversing with 
a lady, the wife of a Methodist minister, about 
his past life, filled with wrong-doing and crime, 
said that the act which caused him the most 
remorse was the tipping of the plank on which 
Mrs. Alston, the daughter of Aaron Burr, 
walked into the ocean. Said he: ' I was a sailor 
on a pirate vessel. We captured the vessel in 
which the lady was. When told she must walk 

' This man's name was Benjamin F. Burdick. 



334 ROMANTIC DAYS 

the plank into the ocean she asked for a few 
moments alone, which was granted. She came 
forward, when told her time had expired, dressed 
beautifully in white, the loveliest woman I 
had ever seen. Calmly she stepped upon the 
plank. With eyes raised to the heavens and 
hands crossed reverently upon her bosom, she 
walked slowly and firmly into the ocean, with- 
out an apparent tremor. Had I refused to per- 
form my work, as I wish with all my heart I 
had, my death would have been sure and cer- 
tain.' 

" This," concludes Mrs. Drake, " is the testi- 
mony of an almost dying man, the confession 
of the most terrible act of his life. It seems to 
me, when an old man,^ bemoaning his life, 
filled with sin, makes such a confession, without 
any provocation whatever than the unburdening 
of his soul during his preparation for another 
life — for death came soon after — that there 
must be truth in his statement. The lady to 
whom the confession was made repeated to my 
grandmother, whose maiden name was Mary 
Edwards, and who was a cousin of Aaron Burr, 
the story as I have told it, as she had frequently 
heard her speak of the mystery concerning the 
death of Mrs. Alston." 

Fifteen years later the New York Mail and 

^ Burdick told substantially the same story to a Mrs. McComber 
with whom he hved during his declining years. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 335 

Express copied and so gave wide publicity to 
a new version of the " pirate's story." Miss 
Bettie F. Pool, it appears, had just published 
in Wortkingtons Magazine an article setting 
forth that there had recently come to light on 
the North Carolina coast a portrait which there 
was strong reason to believe was one which 
the ill-starred Theodosia Alston was taking 
with her to her father on the vessel whose ul- 
timate fate had never been determined. This 
portrait had been found by the late Dr. W. C. 
Pool at Nag's Head, North Carolina, in 1869, 
through a Mrs. Mann of that place whom he 
had professionally attended and who said the 
picture had been given to her, years before, 
by her first husband, one Tillett, once a mem- 
ber of a piratical crew. Various members of 
the Burr and Edwards families to whom Dr. 
Pool sent photographs of the portrait pronounced 
it, almost without exception, a likeness of 
Theodosia Alston. 

From this time on many variations of the 
story appeared, the shortest and clearest being 
perhaps the following, printed in the New York 
Times of July 2, 1901, over the signature of 
Alexander Quarles Holladay, LL. D., who has 
since died: " Dr. William Pool, who died a 
few years ago, a distinguished physician of 
Elizabeth City, North Carolina, was for many 
years in the habit of spending some weeks of 



336 ROMANTIC DAYS 

summer at Nag's Head,^ a surf -bathing resort 
on the narrow strip of sand known as the Pen- 
insula, separating the great inner sounds of 
North Carohna from the Atlantic. Near this 
little summer village, years ago, lived in sullen, 
suspicious seclusion Mrs. Tillett, the aged 
widow of Joseph Tillett, who, as far back as 
1808, held a sort of eminence among his fellow- 
wreckers and fishermen, and who died before 
1850. 

" It so happened during one of Dr. Pool's 
sojourns at Nag's Head that his professional 
skill saved the life of the granddaughter of Mrs. 
Tillett, the only creature for whom her mo- 
rose old age seemed to feel strong affection, and 
from this time the aged woman exhibited some 
feeling of gratitude toward the generous doctor, 
who, with each returning summer, renewed his 
acquaintance, often ministering to her wants 
and infirmities. At last she told him that she 
would not live to see him return and she wished 
to give him the only thing she possessed that 
he might value as a small acknowledgment of 
his long-continued kindness to her, and to his 
surprise she placed in his hands a well-painted 
and handsome portrait of a high-bred lady, of 
which, in answer to his urgent inquiry, she 

1 That wreckers formerly lived in this little coast settlement is 
certain. The very name of the place, Nag's Head, came from the 
fact that they used a lantern hung from the neck of an old nag (who 
was then led up and down the beach) to decoy passing craft. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 337 

reluctantly gave this account as coming from 
her former husband, Joseph Tillett." And then 
followed the story of a lost ship with any crimi- 
nal share Tillett might have had in the scuttling 
of it carefully omitted. *' Dr. Pool never felt 
sure," the writer of the article says, " that he 
had been told the whole truth." He concludes: 
*' The portrait still hangs on the walls of the 
old Pool residence in Elizabeth City, and is in 
the possession of gentle people who will not 
refuse inspection of it to any serious inquirer." 
The daughter of the painter Sully, herself 
a sculptor, once pronounced this portrait to 
be clearly of Theodosia Burr Alston, it is inter- 
esting to know, and various other authorities 
have confirmed her view. Those who are in- 
terested to follow all the details of the contro- 
versy excited by the " pirate confessions " 
and by the " claims for the portrait " are re- 
ferred to C. F. Pidgin's painstaking review of 
the whole matter in his book, Theodosia. The 
portrait itself is still in an excellent state of 
preservation and is now owned by Dr. Pool's 
daughter, Mrs. Overman of Elizabeth City, 
North Carolina, who has courteously sent me 
the photograph of it herewith reproduced. 



CHAPTER VI 

RICHMOND AND SOME FAMOUS VIRGINIAN HOMES 

AT the outbreak of the Revolution Rich- 
mond was smaller than either Freder- 
icksburg or Norfolk and possessed far 
less importance; its sole claim to be a capital 
lay in its geographical situation. St. John's 
Church, on the hill, and Col. Byrd's residence, 
Belvidere, were the only impressive buildings 
then to be seen as one approached the place. 
The settlement was, in very truth, but a col- 
lection of disjointed country villages lying around 
a central trading-station. What the city lacked 
in splendid architecture it made up in noble 
men, however, chief of these being, of course, 
Patrick Henry, that extraordinary figure whose 
matchless courage, fiery eloquence and compell- 
ing magnetism placed him, early in his public 
career, among the undying heroes of our country. 
It was in old St. John's that the second Vir- 
ginian convention of delegates assembled in 
March, 1775; here it was, therefore, that Henry 
made that great speech, with its climax, " Give 
me liberty or give me death," thus stepping 



t- 



flf^fff\" ■■'"*, 




IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 339 

forth " at the appointed time, Hke one of the 
ancient prophets, burdened with a message 
of wisdom and hope." ^ 

It was not, however, until 1779, when Thomas 
Jefferson was chief officer of the State, that the 
seat of government was removed from Wilhams- 
burg to Richmond. The foundation of the new 
Capitol was laid August 18, 1785. Jefferson 
stood sponsor for the model which was used — 
that of the Maison Carree at Nimes, France — 
considering that structure " one of the most 
beautiful, if not tlie most beautiful and precious 
morsels of architecture left us by antiquity . . . 
very simple but noble beyond expression." 
Unfortunately, the Richmond edifice did not 
measure up to the hopes cherished for it ; but it 
was far from being a commonplace building. 

Very great credit for the evolution of the 
shabby little trading-place into a really im- 
pressive city is due to Colonel John Mayo, pro- 
prietor and founder of the celebrated Mayo 
Bridge, just below the falls of the James River 
at Richmond. Colonel Mayo obtained a charter 
for this bridge in 1785 but, finding that this 

1 Most of us know Patrick Henry only as an orator. He was 
that; " by far the most powerful speaker I ever heard," George 
Mason, himself a man of great ability, pronounced him. " But," 
Mason continues, " his eloquence is the smallest part of his merit. 
He is, in my opinion, the first man upon this continent as well in 
abilities as in public virtues." Henry was bom at " Studley," 
sixteen miles from Richmond, May 29, 1736. 



340 KOMANTIC DAYS 

was all he was likely to obtain from the State, 
boldly built the st met lire at his own expense, 
being laughed at, the while, as an ill-balaneed 
experimenter. Only ridicule had greeted his 
petition for a charter, one prominent member of 
the Legislature observing " that after passing 
tJiat bill he supposed they would pass one to 
build a ladder to the moon." 

Colonel Mayo's wife was Abigail De Hart, of 
Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and their eldest 
daughter, ^[aria, became the reigning belle of 
the day. She was a great beauty, wrote and 
repeated poetry charmingly and sang and played 
exquisitely on the harp. Moreover, she was so 
fascinating in manner that one hundred suitors 
are said to have been refused by her ere she 
married General Winfield Scott. Even he did 
not win her easily. She said him nay as ^Ir. 
Scott, again as Captain Scott, and still again 
as Colonel Scott. But when he came to her as 
General Scott, hero of Lundy's Lane, and begged 
for the honor of her hand, she capitulated and 
they were marrieii at Bellville, on the evening 
of March 11, 1S17, to the accompaniment of 
what a letter of the times describes as " splendid 
doings." 

In a charming article entitled ** Some Rich- 
mond Portraits," published in the Harper's 
Magazine for April, ISSo, there is a little sketch 
of Richmond Society dui'iug this period. The 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 341 

cravat, we are told, was an important part 
of a gentleman's toilet, and a Richmond ex- 
quisite " vested himself like a silk-worm in its 
ample folds." His valet held one end and he 
the other of the long thin texture, the former 
walking around his master till both ends met, 
when they were tied in a large bow. The Rich- 
mond exquisite who could not afford a valet 
tied one end of his cravat to the bed-post and 
then began the exercise which served to equip 
him with a properly swathed neck. 

A highly entertaining glimpse of Richmond 
social life in 1807 is afforded by a raCy passage 
in one of Washington Irving's letters. " By 
some unlucky means or other," he writes, " when 
I first made my appearance in Richmond, I 
got the character among three or four novel- 
read damsels of being an interesting young man ; 
now of all characters in the world, believe me, 
this is the most intolerable for any young man, 
who has a will of his own to support ; particularly 
in warm weather. The tender-hearted fair 
ones think you absolutely at their command; 
they conclude that you must, of course, be fond 
of moonlight walks and rides at daybreak, 
and red-hot strolls in the middle of the day, 
(Fahrenheit's Thermoni. 983^ in the shade) 
and ' melting-hot,' ' hissing-hot ' tea parties; and 
what is worse they expect you to talk sentiment 
and act Romeo, and Sir Charles and King Pepin 



342 ROMANTIC DAYS 

all the while. 'Twas too much for me; had I 
been in love with any of them I believe I could 
have played the dying swain as eloquently and 
foolishly as most men; but not having the good 
luck to be inspired by the tender passion, I 
found the slavery insupportable; so I forthwith 
set about ruining my character as speedily as 
possible. I forgot to go to tea parties; over- 
slept myself of a morning; I protested against 
the moon and derided that blessed planet most 
villainously. In a word, I was soon given up 
as a young man of most preposterous and in- 
corrigible opinions, and was left to do e'en just 
as I pleased." 

The occasion which had brought Irving to 
Richmond was the trial for treason of Aaron 
Burr, of which we have heard in a previous 
chapter. Irving had no connection of any im- 
portance with this cause Celebrex but the presiding 
judge, Chief Justice Marshall, was a Richmond 
man of such high qualities and delightful sim- 
plicity as must particularly have appealed to 
a student and writer of Irving's temperament. 
Judge Marshall was wont to market for himself 
and might often be seen, at an early hour, return- 
ing home with a pair of fowls or a basket of eggs 
in his hand. For many years he traveled the 
nearly two hundred miles between Richmond 
and Raleigh, where he held Federal Court, in a 
vehicle known as a " stick gigj" with one horse 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 343 

and no attendant. He wrote his own epitaph ^ 
in order that only the bare facts of his hfe should 
there find a place. 

Another famous lawyer who should be con- 
nected with the Richmond of this era — in- 
spite of the fact that we always associate him 
chiefly with Kentucky — is Henry Clay. Clay 
was born in Hanover County, Virginia, April 
12, 1777, the son of a Baptist minister who 
died early. Thus it was that the boy had a 
childhood marked by extreme poverty and was 
obliged, at fourteen, to begin life as a handy-lad 
in a small retail store of Richmond. The study 
of law early began to attract him, however, and 
he was soon admitted to the bar. His great 
success in his profession began soon after his 
removal to Lexington, Kentucky, which State 
he represented in Washington for the greater 
part of the half century between the winter of 
1806, when he was first a senator, to the year 
1852 when he died. He was recognized as the 
most distinguished spokesman of the South to 
be found in Washington. Though not so keen 
as Calhoun he possessed the rare faculty of 
inspiring his hearers by his fervid appeals and 
filling them with his own enthusiasm. For the 
election of 1832 he was run as candidate for 

' Judge Marshall's home at the time of his death, in 1835, and for 
many years previously, was the two-story brick building (erected 
1795) at the corner of 9th and Marshall Streets. 



344 ROMANTIC DAYS 

President by the National Republican party 
which had been formed under his leadership. 

The favorite amusement of Richmond in 
early Republican days was loo and it is sad to 
add that the Richmond ladies played it to excess. 
They would meet at each other's houses of 
an afternoon, enjoy tea and gossip, and then 
play loo for stakes which often grew quite heavy 
as the afternoon waned. For, although the 
sums ventured at first were always small, 
the amounts in the pool were allowed to ac- 
cumulate, until, with forfeits, they often to- 
talled seventy-five or one hundred dollars. 
" The practice of playing thus became at last 
a social evil; domestic duties were neglected, 
mothers forgot their children, wives rifled the 
pocket books of their husbands; gentlemen 
gambled away their gold vest-buttons and ladies 
their ear-rings and bracelets, carried away by 
the mad spirit of loo." 

All the writers of the period credit to the burn- 
ing of the Richmond Theatre, December 26, 
1811, the change from these light and careless 
ways to the graver and more serious tone which 
soon characterized Richmond society. *' The 
families seated on the hills," one of these writers 
says, " were a polished, refined, sociable, pleasure- 
loving community, gathered from the different 
counties because, from time immemorial, the 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 345 

wealth and fashion and beauty of Virginia had 
assembled at the capital, particularly at the 
time of the sessions of the General Assembly. 
The theatre was one and but one of their oc- 
casional amusements, and not the one of the 
highest refinement. An old-fashioned Virginia 
dining party, select in its company, unlimited 
in its elegant preparations, was unbounded in 
its refined indulgence of the appetite, and the 
delicate attentions of social intercourse. Here 
was the display of taste in dress, elegance in 
manners, powers of conversation and every ac- 
complishment that adorns society. The theatre 
was a promiscuous gathering for a few hours, 
less attractive than the dining or dancing party, 
but one of the round of pleasure that occupied 
the time of the fashionable and the wealthy. 
" On that fatal night (December 26, 1811) the 
benefit of an admired actor enlisted the feelings 
of the community. Mr. Smith, Governor of the 
State, Venable, president of the Bank of Virginia, 
Botts, an eminent lawyer, members of the 
Assembly, matronly ladies, fascinating belles, 
blooming girls, officers of the army and navy, 
men and youth from the city and country, 
were collected in one splendid group, such as 
a theatre seldom sees. Alas! that such a gather- 
ing should be for death, a most terrible death! 
An order was given about the light. The boy 
that held the strings objected — ' that it would 



346 ROMANTIC DAYS 

set the scenery on fire.' The order was repeated. 
The boy obeyed. And immediately the theatre 
was in flames." ^ 

Seventy-two individuals, the flower of Rich- 
mond and the State, perished in this fire, and 
since none of the bereaved could recognize 
their own dead, a common burial was held. 
The whole city was in mourning; and the whole 
city seemed, too, with one accord to acknowledge 
" God's providence in the concurrence of cir- 
cumstances preceding the catastrophe. The 
gallantry, and heroism, and blind fatality of 
that suffering night have never been surpassed," 
declares Dr. Foote, " and never perhaps has 
the sudden destruction of men, women and chil- 
dren in one overwhelming ruin produced a 
greater moral effect. All classes in the community 
bowed down before the Lord. Christians were 
moved to efforts of kindness and love that the gos- 
pel might be preached abundantly in Richmond." 

Up to this time, rather curiously, Richmond 
had no church — except the venerable and out- 
of-the-way St. John's — but this lack of conven- 
iently-situated edifices for the accommodation 
of different faiths gave rise to a very excellent 
custom — that of using for church-worship the 
Hall of the House of Delegates. Here, on al- 
ternate Sundays, Parson Buchanan, an Epis- 
copalian, and Parson Blair, a Presbyterian, 
1 Sketches of Virginia, by Rev. William Henry Foote, D. D, 




HENRY CLAY. 



From the portrait by S. F. B. Morse in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 

A^ew York. 
Page 343. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 347 

presided over a pulpit which disappeared on 
week days. And, such was the spirit of toler- 
ance and liberality which their fraternalism 
inspired, that it soon came to be the custom 
for the individuals of the two separate congre- 
gations to come every Sabbath! Moreover, 
Mr. Buchanan, being a bachelor and well- 
to-do, gladly shared all his fees with Mr. Blair, 
a married man blessed with a large family. 
Once an amusing joke was played on the latter 
by reason of this custom. Mr. Buchanan had 
gone thirty miles into the country to perform 
the marriage service and had hired a carriage for 
two days with which to make the journey. His 
fee was ten dollars. Whereupon he presented 
his Presbyterian brother with the following bill: 

The Rev. J. D. Blair 

To the Rev. J. Buchanan 

To hire of a carriage two days at $5 $10 

To horse feed and other expenses to and fro $ 3 



$13 
By wedding fee $ 5 



Balance due to J. Buchanan $ 8 

Presbyterians and Episcopalians now sub- 
scribed with equal eagerness and generosity to the 
Monumental Church which it was determined to 
erect on the site of the theatre, as a memorial 
to the fire-victims, and for some time it remained 



348 ROMANTIC DAYS 

undecided to which form of worship the resulting 
edifice should be dedicated. Finally the major- 
ity vote was cast in the interest of the Epis- 
copalians with the result that, in February, 
1814, Dr. Moore of New York was elected rector 
of the church and became bishop of the diocese. 
But the fraternal feelings remained undisturbed, 
Mr. Buchanan continuing to extend to Mr. Blair's 
successor the generous help he insisted to be the 
right of a bachelor towards a brother-pastor 
responsible for wife and children. 

Among the lovely women who had perished 
in the theatre fire was Mrs. Joseph Gallego, 
wife of a native of Malaga, Spain, who, with 
Jean Auguste Chevallie, had built up the famous 
Gallego Mills of Richmond. Chevallie, whose 
wife was the sister of Mrs. Gallego, had first 
come to Richmond in 1790, as agent of the 
celebrated Beaumarchais in the latter's claim 
against the United States Government for 
moneys advanced during the American Revo- 
lution. This claim was finally settled in 1835, 
at which time Beaumarchais's family accepted 
about one-third of the sum originally demanded. 
How there came to be a claim at all constitutes 
one of the most romantic chapters ^ in the un- 
written history of the Revolution. 

* Some of my readers may be interested to look up a paper of mine 
on Franklin and the French Intriguers, published in Appleton's Magor 
vine for February, 1906. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 349 

Most of us know Beaumarchais, the talented i 
son of a watchmaker, only as author of " The 
Barber of Seville " and " The Marriage of 
Figaro." But in addition to being a literary 
man of parts Beaumarchais was a " king's man," 
one whose services to Louis XV had been so 
numerous and so varied that his biographer, 
Lomenie, was able to win a place among the 
Immortals merely by chronicling them. One 
of the most cherished traditions inherited by 
Louis XVI from his grandfather was that no- 
body could perform difficult and delicate serv- 
ices so well as Beaumarchais. 

The only individual who surpassed the watch- 
maker's son in resourcefulness and in skill as 
a secret-service agent was that extraordinary 
person known as the Chevalier d'Eon, who, be- 
cause he had once served his king at the Court 
of Russia in the disguise of a woman, has come 
down to us in history as a woman who pretended 
to be a man. To Beaumarchais d'Eon " con- 
fessed," on a certain occasion, that he was in 
truth a woman, and to color his assertion de- 
clared that he was at that very moment con- 
sumed by a passion for Beaumarchais ! For once 
the tricky watchmaker was tricked ! In Beau- 
marchais's subsequent letters to de Vergennes, 
the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, con- 
cerning the proposition that France should 
help America in her struggle for independence, 



350 ROMANTIC DAYS 

there can be found no evidence that either in 
the least suspected d'Eon to be deceiving them. 
Bram Stoker asserts ^ that when d'Eon returned 
to France modestly clad in coif and petticoats 
he had assumed the female garb merely to 
indulge a whim of Marie Antoinette's; the 
fact is, however, that d'Eon was compelled by 
Louis XVI to wear the clothes that " belonged " 
to his sex if he wished to return to France at 
all! And the interesting and curious thing, for 
our present purpose, is, that it is the king's order 
directing Chevalier d'Eon to assume woman's 
clothes which supplies the introduction to Beau- 
marchais's accredited connection with the 
American Revolution. Beaumarchais had pre- 
sented to the Count de Vergennes for replies 
in the king's own hand (before his departure 
for London, December 13, 1775) a series of 
" essential points " regarding the Chevalier 
d'Eon's clothes, and on the same paper, in the 
course even of the same dialogue, he passes to 
the American affair and seeks to gain by assault 
the king's adhesion to plans with which he had 
been pursuing him for some time. " Finally 
I request before starting," he writes, *' a posi- 
tive answer to my last note, for if ever a question 
was important it must be admitted that it is this 
one." The " question " here alluded to was none 
other than that of French help for the Americans. 

^ In Famous Impostors. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 351 

Beaumarchais's ^ desire to enlist France defi- 
nitely on the side of America had been greatly 
stimulated by certain talks he had enjoyed at 
the London home of John Wilkes with Arthur 
Lee, that mischievous person of whom Franklin 
once said superlatively: " In sowing jealousies 
and suspicions, in creating quarrels and mis- 
understandings among friends, in malice, subtlety 
and indefatigable industry Arthur Lee has, I 
think, no equal." Lee made Beaumarchais 
believe that England, France's " natural enemy,'* 
must soon totter to ruins unless she stopped 
making war with America. He also helped the 
wily playwright to see that, for Beaumarchais, 

1 Beaumarchais was in this affair as in all others a soldier of 
fortune. Chevalier d'Eon, on the contrary, was a man of parts 
whom Louis XV had been glad to honor and to trust. Court in- 
trigues and the fact that d'Eon possessed certain papers which 
jealous rivals greatly desired to have in their own hands inspired 
the journey of Beaumarchais in the course of which came d'Eon's 
extraordinary " confession." The Chevalier's object in making the 
" confession " was doubtless that he might wring better terms from 
Beaumarchais. It is possible that Beaumarchais, when he learned 
that he had been duped, conceived the diabolical idea of forcing 
d'Eon to remain a " woman," or submit to exile. M. de Flassan, 
the grave author of the History of French Diplomacy, asserts in his 
volume, published in 1809 (the year before d'Eon's death) that 
" this curious person was possessed by a mania for playing the part 
of a man." In his old age d'Eon taught sword-play in London for 
a living, thus eking out the pension of £40 granted him by George 
III. He died in May, 1810, and his sex was then indisputably 
established by a post-mortem examination of his remains, made be- 
fore several witnesses of position and repute, in accordance with the 
wishes of the Chevalier's friends, who determined thus to settle a 
mooted question for all time. 



352 ROMANTIC DAYS 

there would be a fortune, and for him, Arthur 
Lee, undying fame, if only France could be per- 
suaded to send munitions of war to America 
without seeming to take any part in the dispute. 
Thus it came about that " Roderigue Hortalez 
& Co." began to have much business with the 
Congress of the United States; and because 
of Arthur Lee's duplicity Beaumarchais, the 
leading member of that firm, was soon forced 
to employ an agent to " collect." But what a 
very long way we have wandered from Rich- 
mond because the sister of that agent's wife 
was one of the ladies who perished in the burn- 
ing of the theatre ! 

Just before the burning of the theatre the 
mother of Edgar Allan Poe was a member of 
the troupe of local players. Mrs. Poe was an 
actress of very real ability, but her health had 
for some years now been failing and her family, 
on the verge of destitution, soon became an 
object for the charity of Richmond ladies. In 
the Enquirer of November 29, 1811, appeared 
the following card: 

"0^° TO THE HUMANE 

" On this night, Mrs. Poe lingering on the bed of 
disease and surrounded by her children, asks your as- 
sistance; and asks it perhaps for the last time." 

A few days later, December 8, she died and 
her two little ones, Edgar and Rosalie, were 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 353 

adopted into the homes of Mrs. Allan, a young 
married woman of twenty -five, and of her 
friend, Mrs. MacKenzie. Each child soon re- 
ceived in baptism, at the hands of Dr. Buchanan, 
the family name of the home thus extended. 

John Allan, who had constituted himself 
Edgar's guardian, was in the tobacco business, 
and so prospered, as Richmond's trade in this 
commodity increased, that in 1815, he went 
over to London to establish a branch office. 
Thus it came about that the impressionable 
dark-eyed lad who had won his wife's heart, had 
the benefit for several formative years of English 
schooling and an English environment. The year 
1820 found Poe back in the Virginian city, how- 
ever, and it was there that the early years of his 
young manhood were passed. Woodberry ^ has 
a charming chapter on the family of which he 
was at this time a part and on the life he led 
with them. *' The Allans," we learn, " be- 
longed to the most cultivated and agreeable 
society that Virginia knew in the days of her 
old-fashioned and justly-famed courtesy and 
hospitality and a boyhood spent in association 
with such gentlemen as Edgar constantly and 
familiarly met could not fail to be both pleasant 
and of the highest utility in forming both manner 
and character. ... In his home life he was 
indulged by the ladies of the family and the 

^Lije of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. I. 



354 ROMANTIC DAYS 

servants as a pet of the house. . . . For he 
was always a favorite with women." 

The first Mrs. Allan died during the West 
Point training upon which Edgar soon embarked, 
and her husband married, in October, 1830, a 
lady who promptly presented him with a son 
and heir of his own blood. This event marked 
the end of Poe's intimate connection with Rich- 
mond ; for very soon now he went forth to make 
his own way in the world. 

A very romantic love-affair of Richmond in 
early Republican days was that of Maria Ward 
and John Randolph of Roanoke. The attach- 
ment began in Randolph's early boyhood and 
became, according to the writer ^ already re- 
ferred to, " the one enthralling passion of Ran- 
dolph's manhood, filling his whole being, until, 
as he himself said, ' he loved her better than his 
own soul or Him that created it.' " A picture 
of Randolph, made at the period when he was 
the accepted lover of Maria Ward, shows him 
to have been, then, a singularly handsome youth, 
with dark and luminous eyes and a profusion 
of soft black hair which would have gone far, 
had he been much less Indian in other ways than 
he proved himself, to establish his direct descent 
from Pocahontas. But though he was a hand- 
some youth and though his wooing of Maria 
Ward was long and ardent he was never to have 

^ Of Some Richmond Portraits. 




col 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 355 

the happiness of calling her his wife. Wliy their 
engagement came abruptly to an end no one 
knows. But one day they parted abruptly 
after an interview marked on her part by tears 
and on his by a furious galloping away for all 
time from the house which was her home. 

They never met again; but, one day, learn- 
ing that she was staying at a house in the neigh- 
borhood, he lingered long on the porch to hear 
her sing the songs they two had loved. And 
while she, all unconscious of his nearness, 
rendered one after another, the tender ballads 
associated with their courtship he strode up and 
down outside like a madman muttering, in the 
anguish of his heart, " Macbeth hath murdered 
sleep; Macbeth can sleep no more." Maria 
Ward married Peyton Randolph, son of Ed- 
mund Randolph, who had been Governor of 
Virginia and Secretary of State under Washing- 
ton. She died in 1826, still as lovely as a girl 
though then forty-two. Her discarded lover 
continued to be a somewhat violent person. 
He once came in contact, while in Congress, 
with Thomas Mann Randolph, who had married 
Jefferson's daughter Martha. So bitter were 
the words exchanged in their debate that a 
duel was arranged between them but the actual 
encounter was, happily, prevented. 

Lafayette's return to Richmond, in 1824, 
was a signal for great rejoicing and for very elab- 



356 ROMANTIC DAYS 

orate entertainment. For the ball given in 
his honor the quadrangle formed by the sur- 
rounding buildings and galleries of the Eagle 
Hotel was floored over and covered with awnings. 
Yet it was to quite another part of Virginia that 
Lafayette turned with greatest eagerness — to 
the home on the Potomac where, a few years 
previously, he had visited Washington in his 
retirement. The great General was now no 
more but, for a few solemn moments, Lafayette 
stood inside the enclosure of the tomb near 
the river alone with the ashes of his revered 
friend. To George Washington Lafayette 
Mount Vernon had been a hospitable home 
during the troubled period of the French Revo- 
lution, its stately owner having then borne to 
him the relation of a tender guardian. 

To none of the young Frenchmen, indeed, 
who, at this period of France's history — or 
earlier — came to America does Washington 
appear to have been indifferent. Louis Philippe 
and his two brothers and the Due de Roche- 
foucauld -Liancourt were among the General's 
most welcome visitors. The latter probably 
particularly pleased Washington by his sturdy 
declaration: " In the days of my power, 
under the ancient regime of France, I had 
fifty servants to wait upon me, but yet my coat 
was never as well brushed as now that I do it 
myself." It was this nobleman, it will be re- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 357 

membered, who had taken to Louis XVI at Ver- 
sailles news of the storming of the Bastille, and 
to that monarch's exclamation, " It is a revolt! " 
had replied tersely, " Sire, it is a revolution! " 

That this young Duke had the gift of writing 
as well as that of repartee we find from his book 
describing his travels in America. Particularly 
keen were his observations and comments on 
Virginian home life. '* The Virginians generally," 
he declared, " enjoy a character for hospitality 
which they truly deserve; they are fond of 
company; their hospitality is sincere, and may 
perhaps be the reason for their spending more 
than they should do; for, in general they are 
not rich, especially in clear income. You find 
therefore, very frequently, a table well served 
and covered with plate, in a room where half 
the windows have been broken for ten years 
past, and will probably remain so ten years 
longer. But few houses are in a tolerate state 
of repair and no part of their buildings is kept 
better than the stables, because the Virginians are 
fond of hunting, races, and in short of all pleas- 
ures and amusements that render it necessary 
to take peculiar care of horses, which are the 
fashion of the day." ^ 

Another observant Frenchman, writing at 
about the same time, claims that the only thing 
for which an average Virginian gentleman would 

1 Travels Through the United States, 1795-97: London, 1799. 



358 ROMANTIC DAYS 

exert himself even a little was the oversight of 
his stables. Witness this account of a stren- 
uous (?) day. " He rises about nine o'clock. 
He, perhaps, may make an exertion to walk as 
far as his stables to see his horse, — which are 
seldom more than fifty yards from his house. 
He returns between nine and ten to breakfast, 
which is generally of tea or coffee, bread and 
butter, and very thin slices of venison, ham or 
hung beef. He then lies down on a pallet, on 
the floor in the coolest room in the house in his 
shirt and trowsers [sic] only with a negro at his 
head and another at his feet to fan him and keep 
off the flies. Between twelve and one he takes 
a draft of bombo or toddy, a liquor composed 
of water, sugar, rum and nutmeg which is made 
weak and kept cool. He dines between two and 
three and at every table, whatever else there may 
be, a ham and greens of cabbage are always 
a standing dish. At dinner, he drinks cider, 
toddy, punch, port, claret or Madeira, which is 
generally excellent here. Having drank some 
few glasses of wine after dinner, he returns to 
his pallet with his two blacks to fan him and 
continues to drink toddy or sangaree all the 
afternoon. He does not always drink tea. 
Between nine and ten in the evening he eats 
a light supper of milk and fruit or wine sugar 
and fruit and almost immediately retires to 
bed for the night." 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 359 

If Washington had adopted a regimen ap- 
proximating this he might have Hved to a green 
old age on his charming rural estate. Instead 
he wore himself out riding about his farms 
throughout the long hot summer, surveying 
and carrying his compass himself/ 

There is a delightful anecdote about Washing- 
ton as a good Samaritan to some people who 
had met misfortune near his country-home, 
which, I think, illustrates better than anything 
else I have ever encountered the great man's 
real kindliness. John Bernard, who tells this 
story in his Retrospections of America ^ was an 
English actor over here to practice his pro- 
fession ; but he spent his summers touring about 
the country. One day in the summer of 1798, 
Bernard found himself not far from Alexandria 
just as a chaise bearing a young man and young 
woman was overturned in the road before him. 

^ In the autumn of 1799, while thus engaged, he was thrown by 
his horse and sustained a slight accident of which he made light; 
and in the following December he similarly refused to take such 
notice as would have been wise of a wetting sustained while going 
about outdoors in a snowstorm. Yet he had then contracted the 
cold which two days later (December 14, 1799) caused his death. 
He was quietly buried in the old tomb on Mount Vernon's hill-side 
after ample opportunity had been given to his lovers, friends and 
neighbors to gaze upon his noble face as he lay on the river-piazza 
under the open sky. Two and a half years later Mrs. Washington 
was laid beside him. Both their tombs are now viewed each year 
by reverent thousands in the spot which the General himself had 
selected to be his final resting-place and to which removal of his 
remains was made in 1837. 

^ Published by Harper and Brothers: New York, 1887. 



360 ROMANTIC DAYS 

To assist him in caring for the couple and set- 
ting up their overturned vehicle a horseman 
came galloping up and for at least half an hour, 
under the meridian sun in the middle of July, 
the two hauled and helped and lifted together. 
Then, the couple having been sent gratefully 
on their way, the actor turned to survey his 
fellow-helper and found him " a tall, erect, 
well-made man, evidently advanced in years, 
but who appeared to have retained all the 
vigor and elasticity resulting from a life of 
temperance and exercise. His dress was a 
blue coat buttoned to his chin and buckskin 
breeches. Though the instant he took off his 
hat I could not avoid the recognition of familiar 
lineaments — which, indeed, I was in the habit 
of seeing on every sign-post and over every 
fire-place — still I failed to identify him, and, 
to my surprise, I found I was an object of equal 
speculation in his eyes. A smile at length 
lighted them up and he exclaimed, '•''"-. Bernard, 
I believe? ' I bowed. ' I had the pleasure of 
seeing you perform last winter in Philadelphia.' 
I bowed again, and he added. . . . ' You must 
be fatigued. If you will ride up to my house, 
which is not a mile distant, you can prevent 
any ill-effects of this exertion by a couple of 
hours' rest.' 

*' I looked round for his dwelling, and he 
pointed to a building, which, the day before, 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 361 

I had spent an hour in contemplating. ' Mount 
Vernon!' I exclaimed; and then, drawing back 
with a stare of wonder, ' have I the honor of 
addressing General Washington? ' With a 
smile, whose expression of benevolence I have 
rarely seen equalled, he offered his hand and 
replied, ' An odd sort of introduction, Mr. 
Bernard ; but I am pleased to find that you can 
play so active a part in private and without a 
prompter.' " 

And then, as they rode to Mount Vernon 
together, Bernard tells us that he could not but 
think that he had witnessed one of the strongest 
evidences of a great man's claim to his reputa- 
tion — " the prompt, impulsive working of a 
heart which, having made the good of mankind 
its religion, was never so happy as in practically 
displaying it." That afternoon, as they were 
waited on by a slave, Washington confessed to 
his visitor that he not only prayed for free- 
dom for the ^ ' cks but could " clearly foresee 
that nothing ^ut the rooting out of slavery 
can perpetuate the existence of our union!" 

Perhaps the very best example of Virgin- 
ian country life in the days of the early 
Republic may be gleaned from following the 
daily routine of this great man after he had re- 
tired to Mount Vernon from Philadelphia. One 
of the final festivities given to him in the city 
where he had served as President was a splendid 



362 ROMANTIC DAYS 

banquet in a hall hung with many paintings, 
among them one of Mount Vernon, the home to 
which he was about to hasten and towards 
which, as we now know, his heart had long been 
yearning. On the day preceding his retirement 
he wrote to Henry Knox, formerly his fellow- 
soldier and more recently his political coadju- 
tor, " To the weary traveller who sees a resting 
place and is bending his body to lean thereon 
I now compare myself. . . . But although the 
prospect of retirement is most grateful to my 
soul and I have not a wish to mix again in the 
great world, or to partake in its politics, yet 
I am not without my regrets at parting with 
(perhaps never more to meet) the few intimates 
whom I love; and among these, be assured, you 
are one. . . . The remainder of my life which, 
in the course of nature, cannot be long, will be 
occupied in rural amusements; and though I 
shall seclude myself as much as possible from 
the noisy and bustling world, none would more 
than myself be regaled by the company of those 
I esteem, at Mount Vernon." 

For a time company was impossible, however, 
because, as Washington wrote, " there is scarcely 
a room to put a friend into or to sit in my- 
self without the music of hammers and the odor- 
iferous scent of paint." Yet he was soon able 
to welcome guests; and so found himself living 
the ideal life he thus outlines to Oliver Wolcott: 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 363 

" To make and sell a little flour annually, to 
repair houses going fast to ruin, to build one for 
the security of my papers of a public nature, 
and to amuse myself in agricultural and rural 
pursuits. ... If also I could now and then 
meet the friends I esteem, it would fill the meas- 
ure and add zest to my enjoyments; but if 
ever this happens it must be under my own vine 
and fig tree, as I do not think it probable that 
I shall go beyond twenty miles from them." 

Into the task of building up his long-neglected 
estate Washington threw himself with character- 
istic energy. " I begin my diurnal course with 
the sun," he wrote James McHenry, " and if 
my hirelings are not in their places at that 
time I send them messages of sorrow for their 
indisposition; . . . then comes breakfast at a 
little after seven o'clock, and this being over 
I mount my horse and ride around my farms, 
which employs me until it is time to dress for 
dinner, at which I rarely miss seeing strange 
faces come, as they say, out of respect to me. 
. . .'The usual time of sitting at table, a walk, 
and tea bring me within the dawn of candle light; 
previous to which, if not prevented by company, 
I resolve that, as soon as the glimmering taper 
supplies the place of the great luminary, I will 
retire to my writing table and acknowledge 
the letters I have received; but when the lights 
are brought I feel tired and disinclined to engage 



364 ROMANTIC DAYS 

in this work, conceiving that the next night 
will do as well. The next night comes and with 
it the same causes for postponement, and so 
on. Having given you the history of a day, it 
will serve for a year, and I am persuaded you will 
not require a second edition of it. But it may 
strike you that, in this detail, no mention is made 
of any time allotted for reading. The remark 
would be just, for I have not looked into a book 
since I came home nor shall I be able to do it 
until I have discharged my workmen; probably 
not before the nights grow longer, when pos- 
sibly I may be looking in Doomsday Book." 
The rather melancholy reflection with which 
this letter closes was not an uncommon mood 
with Washington at this time. There is no 
question about it; his arduous tasks of a life- 
time had left him very tired. The throngs of 
people who came to see him " out of respect " 
wearied him, too, and because of this he soon 
engaged that his nephew, Lawrence Lewis, 
should plan to make his home at Mount Vernon 
for at least a part of the time. " Your aunt 
and I," he wrote this young man, " are both in 
the decline of life and regular in our habits, 
especially in our hours of rising and going to 
bed, so I require some person (fit and proper) 
to ease me of the trouble of entertaining com- 
pany, particularly of nights, as it is my incli- 
nation to retire (and unless prevent^ by very 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 365 

particular company I always do retire) either 
to bed or to my study soon after candle light. 
In taking those duties (which hospitality obliges 
one to bestow on company) off my hands, it 
would render me a very acceptable service." 
Lawrence Lewis accordingly made arrange- 
ments to spend a good deal of time at Mount 
Vernon, doing this the more gladly, we may be 
sure, because he soon fell in love with pretty 
Nelly Custis,^ Mrs. Washington's granddaugh- 
ter, who with her brother, George W. P. Custis, 
had been adopted by the General at their fa- 
ther's death. Washington was very fond of this 
charming young girl and one of the most de- 
lightful products of his pen is a letter of half- 
humorous, half -serious advice sent her when her 
love-affairs were perplexing her a bit and when, 
woman-like, she had protested that she did 
not care a fig for any of the men she knew and 
so was determined " not to give herself a mo- 
ment's uneasiness on their account." Washing- 
ton shrewdly questioned her power to adhere 
to this resolution and wrote :^ " Men and women 
feel the same inclination towards each other 
now that they always have done, and which they 
will continue to do until there is a new order of 
things; and you, as others have done, may find 

^ Lawrence Lewis and Nelly Custis were married on Washington's 
birthday, 1799. 

^ MS. letter quoted in Irving's lAJe of Washington. 



366 ROMANTIC DAYS 

that the passions of your sex are easier raised 
than allayed. Do not, therefore, boast too 
soon nor too strongly of your insensibility. . . . 
Love is said to be an involuntary passion, and it 
is therefore contended that it cannot be resisted. 
This is true in part only, for like all things else, 
when nourished and supplied plentifully with 
aliment, it is rapid in its progress; but let 
these be withdrawn, and it may be stifled in 
its birth or much stinted in its growth. . . . 
Although we cannot avoid first impressions, we 
may assuredly place them under guard. . . . 
When the fire is beginning to kindle and your 
heart growing warm, propound these questions 
to it. Who is this invader.^ Have I a competent 
knowledge of him.^ Is he a man of good char- 
acter? A man of sense .^^ For, be assured, a 
sensible woman can never be happy with a fool. 
What has been his walk in life.^ Is his fortune 
sujBBcient to maintain me in the manner I have 
been accustomed to live, and as my sisters do 
live? And is he one to whom my friends can 
have no reasonable objection? If all these 
interrogatories can be satisfactorily answered, 
there will remain but one more to be asked; 
that, however, is an important one. Have I 
sufficient ground to conclude that his affections 
are engaged by me? Without this the heart of 
sensibility will struggle against a passion that 
is not reciprocated." 




ELEANOR PARKE CUSTIS. 

From a painting by Gilbert Stuart in the possession of Mrs. Edwin A. S. Lewis of Nen 

York. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 367 

No man knew better than Washington all that 
a satisfying domestic life means. To men who 
wrote him of an approaching or a consummated 
happy marriage he replied quite as frankly 
and fully as he had written Nelly Custis. There 
is extant a delightful letter sent by him to the 
Marquis de Chastellux when that Frenchman, 
of whom he appears to have been sincerely 
fond, sent to him the news of his recent nuptials. 
The letter is earlier, in point of time, than the 
one to Nelly Custis, but it may very well be 
given here, none the less, inasmuch as it shows 
Washington in his most genial mood. 

" Mount Vernon, April 25, 1788. 
" My dear Marquis : In reading your very 
friendly and acceptable letter of 21st of Decem- 
ber, 1787 [the Marquis had then been back in 
France for five years] which came to hand by the 
last mail, I was, as you may well suppose, 
not less delighted than surprised to come across 
that plain American word ' my wife ' — a Wife ! 
— Well, my dear Marquis, I can hardly re- 
frain from smiling to find that you are caught 
at last. I saw, by the Eulogium you often made 
on the happiness of domestic life in America, 
that you had swallowed the bait and that you 
would as surely as you are a philosopher and a 
soldier, be taken one day or other. So your 
day has at length come. I am glad of it with 



368 ROMANTIC DAYS 

all my heart and soul. It is quite good enough 
for you. Now you are well served for coming 
to fight in favour of the American rebels, all 
the way across the Atlantic ocean, by catching 
that terrible contagion which like the small- 
pox or the plague, a man can have only once in 
his life, because it commonly lasts him (at 
least with us in America — I don't know how 
you manage these matters in France) for his 
lifetime. And yet after all the maledictions 
you so richly merit on the subject the worst 
wish I can find it in my heart to make against 
Madame de Chastellux and yourself is that you 
may neither of you get the better of this domestic 
felicity during the course of your mortal existence. 

"If so wonderful an event should have oc- 
casioned me, my dear Marquis, to have written 
in a strange style, you will understand me as 
clearly as if I had said what in plain English 
is the simple truth: do me the justice to be- 
lieve that I take a heartfelt interest in whatever 
concerns your happiness; and in this view I 
sincerely congratulate you on your auspicious 
matrimonial connection. 

" I am happy to find that Mme. de Chas- 
tellux is so intimately connected with the Duch- 
ess of Orleans, as I have always understood that 
this noble lady was an illustrious pattern of 
connubial love as well as an excellent model 
of virtue in general. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 369 

" While you have been making love under 
the banner of Hymen, the great personages of 
the north have been making war under the in- 
spiration or rather the infatuation of Mars. 
Now for my part I humbly conceive you had 
much the best and wisest of the bargain; for 
certainly it is much more consonant to all the 
principles of reason and religion (natural and 
revealed) to replenish the earth with inhabitants 
rather than de-populate it by killing those al- 
ready in existence; besides it is the time for 
the age of knight-errantry and mad heroism to 
be at an end. 

*' Your young military men, who want to 
reap the harvest of laurels, don't care, I suppose, 
how many seeds of war are sown; but for the 
sake of humanity, it is devoutly to be wished, 
that the manly employment of agriculture and 
the humanizing benefits of commerce, should 
supersede the waste of war, and the rage of 
conquest; that the swords might be turned into 
ploughshares — the spears into pruning hooks 
— and as the Scripture expresses it, ' the nations 
learn war no more.' . . . Hitherto there has 
been much greater unanimity in the favour of 
the proposed government here than could reason- 
ably have been expected. Should the Consti- 
tution be adopted (and I think it will be) 
America will lift up her head again and in a 
few years become respectable among the nations. 



370 ROMANTIC DAYS 

It is a flattering and consolatory reflection that 
our rising republic has the good wishes of all 
philosophers, patriots and virtuous men in all 
nations and that they look upon it as a kind of 
asylum for mankind. God grant that we may 
not be disappointed in our honest expectations 
by our folly or perverseness ! 

" With sentiments of the purest attachment 
and esteem, I have the honour to be, my dear 
Marquis, your most obedient and humble servant, 

" George Washington. 

" The Marquis de Chastellux." 

This likable young Marquis had made some 
observations of his own on Virginian home 
life which are not without interest. *' These 
people," he said, " have the reputation and with 
reason of living nobly in their houses and of 
being hospitable. They give strangers not only 
a willing but a liberal reception. This arises 
on one hand from their having no large towns 
where they may assemble, by which means they 
are little acquainted with society, except from 
the visits they make; and, on the other, their 
land and their negroes furnishing them with 
every article of consumption and the necessary 
service this renowned hospitality costs them very 
little. . . . The chief magnificence of the Vir- 
ginians consists in furniture, linen and plate; 
in which they resemble our ancestors who had 



.•I 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 371 

neither cabinets nor wardrobes in their castles 
but contented themselves with a well-stored 
cellar and a handsome buffet. If they some- 
time dissipate their fortunes it is by gaming, 
hunting and horse-races; but the latter are 
of some utility inasmuch as they encourage the 
breed of horses, which are really very handsome 
in Virginia." 

The great number of slaves everywhere to 
be encountered in the South (Chastellux says 
there were two hundred thousand in Virginia 
alone) suggested to this traveler the desirabil- 
ity of wiping out this unfortunate institution. 
The method he recommends seems to us start- 
ling, to put it mildly: "The best expedient," 
he says, " would be to export a great number of 
males, and to encourage the marriage of white 
men with the females! " 

In this connection it seems worth while to 
add that the contemporary translator of Chas- 
tellux's Travels, if not the Marquis himself, 
found much that was shocking in the negro 
situation of that day. " I have frequently seen 
in Virginia, on visits to gentlemen's houses," 
the latter asserts, " young negroes and negresses 
running about or basking in the court-yard 
naked as they came into the world . . . and 
young negroes from sixteen to twenty years 
old, with not an article of clothing but a loose 
shirt, descending half way down their thighs, 



372 ROMANTIC DAYS 

waiting at table where were ladies, without any 
apparent embarrassment on one side, or the 
slightest attempt at concealment on the other." 
One privilege which de Chastellux enjoyed, 
while in Virginia, was that of visiting Jefferson 
at his charming estate, Monticello. No better 
description than his of Jefferson at home has 
come down to us: " The house of Mr. Jefferson 
stands pre-eminent in these retirements; it 
was himself who built it and preferred this sit- 
uation; for although he possessed considerable 
property in the neighborhood, there was nothing 
to prevent him from fixing his residence wherever 
he thought proper. But it was a debt nature 
owed to a philosopher and a man of taste that, 
in his own possessions, he should find a spot 
where he might best study and enjoy her. He 
calls his house Monticello (Little Mountain), 
a very modest title, for it is situated upon a 
very lofty one. . . . After ascending by a 
tolerably commodious road for more than half 
an hour, we arrived there. This house, of which 
Mr. Jefferson was the architect and often one 
of the workmen, is rather elegant and in the 
Italian taste though not without fault; it con- 
sists of one large square pavilion the entrance 
of which is by two porticos ornamented by 
pillars. The ground floor consists chiefly of 
a very large lofty salon which is to be decorated 
entirely in the antique style: above it is a 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 373 

library of the same form. Two small wings, 
with only a ground floor and attic story are 
joined to this pavilion and communicate with 
the kitchen, offices, &c, which will form a 
kind of basement story over which runs the 
terrace. My object in this short description 
is only to show the difference between this and 
the other houses of the country; for we may 
safely aver that Mr. Jefferson is the first Ameri- 
can who has consulted the fine arts to know 
how he should shelter himself from the weather. 
" But it is on himself alone I ought to bestow 
my time. Let me describe to you a man not 
yet forty, tall and with a mild and pleasing 
countenance, but whose mind and understanding 
are ample substitutes for every exterior grace. 
An American . . . who is at once a musician 
skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astrono- 
mer, a natural philosopher, legislator and states- 
man. ... A philosopher in voluntary retire- 
ment from the world and public business.^ . . . 
A mild and amiable wife, charming children of 
whose education he himself takes charge, a 
house to embellish, great provisions to improve, 
and the arts and sciences to cultivate; these 
are what remain to Mr. Jefferson after having 
played a principal character on the theatre of 

1 The period of this young nobleman's visit was that of the Rev- 
olution, it should be recalled. His book was published in France 
in 1786, 



374 ROMANTIC DAYS 

the new world. . . . The visit which I made him 
was not unexpected, for he had long since in- 
vited me to come and pass a few days with him 
in the centre of the mountains ; notwithstanding 
which I found his first appearance serious, nay 
even cold. But before I had been two hours 
with him we were as intimate as if we had passed 
our whole lives together. Walking, books, 
but above all a conversation always varied and 
interesting, always supported by that sweet satis- 
faction experienced by two persons who, in 
communicating their sentiments and opinions 
are invariably in unison, and who understand 
each other at the first hint, made four days pass 
away like so many minutes.^ 

" I recollect with pleasure that as we were 
conversing one evening over a bowl of punch, 
after Mrs. Jefferson had retired, our conversa- 
tion turned on the poems of Ossian. It was a 
spark of electricity which passed rapidly from 
one to the other; we recollected the passages 
in those sublime poems which particularly 
struck us and entertained my fellow travelers 
who fortunately knew English well and were 
qualified to judge of their merits though they 
had never read the poems. In our enthusiasm 
the book was sent for and placed near the bowl 

1 Chastellux's descriptions of Virginia are held to be particularly 
valuable because they give the impressions made by the higher class 
in Virginia upon one used to the cultivated life of France previous 
to that country's Revolution. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 375 

where, by their mutual aid, the night far ad- 
vanced imperceptibly upon us. Sometimes 
natural philosophy, at others politics or the 
arts were the topics of our conversation, for 
no object had escaped Mr. Jefferson; and it 
seemed as if from his youth he had placed his 
mind, as he has done his house, on an elevated 
situation from which he might contemplate 
the universe." 

Each plantation was a little kingdom of 
its own in the Virginia of that day, producing 
within its own limits everything needed for 
life except groceries and fine cloths, which were 
brought from Richmond or some other city in 
the wagons that carried to market the harvest 
of flour and tobacco. Society here was classi- 
fied, sifted and solidly established. Everybody 
and everybody's family was known. Hence 
the F. F. V. characterization of more recent 
years. At the outset these Virginia families 
universally possessed simplicity of character, 
good faith, honesty of purpose, loyalty to a 
conviction, and they exercised liberal hospitality 
and spent their life in the honorable discharge 
of their duty as they saw it. " Thackeray," 
Mrs. Ellet says, " has given us George and Henry 
Esmond as types of the best class in Virginia 
society and, could he have painted a lovable 
woman, he might have given us the feminine 
side also. Madame Esmond, however, is but 



376 ROMANTIC DAYS 

the colonial Englishwoman, losing the calmness 
that marked the caste through the wear and 
tear of managing ignorant servants and ten- 
antry." 

Delightfully free from all ostentation was 
the hospitality which then began and which 
has become the tradition of Virginian life ever 
since. The wealth of the residents consisting 
as it did of land and crops, there was no im- 
posing by false appearance and no sudden in- 
crease of expenditure was possible. " A tem- 
porary show of splendor at the cost of real in- 
convenience would have been regarded," one 
writer says, " as a kind of forgery for the pur- 
poses of an adventurer." And how free the hos- 
pitality was! Southerners traveling in their 
old-fashioned massive carriages drawn by two 
or four horses and attended by mounted servants 
would stop at any plantation in perfect assur- 
ance of a welcome even if equipped with no 
other introduction than the name of a mutual 
friend. Northern travelers usually took the 
mail coaches by the day, with relays of horses 
every ten miles, stopping where they pleased. 
This posting was called " taking the accommoda- 
tion line." And men and women living upon 
remote plantations jolted cheerfully over miles 
of rough road to lend their presence at social 
functions. Fox-hunting was a sport much 
affected; but often the hunt was only an excuse 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 377 

for a round of visits made on the return journey, 
which sometimes was thus made to last a week. 

To be sure, it was a provincial life. Even 
for purposes of education the early Republican 
Virginians did not stray far from home. Hard 
by the Washington College, of which General 
Lee was later president, stood the Military 
Institute over which Stonewall Jackson presided 
for eight years, and the Ann Smith Academy, 
to which the daughters of prominent Virginian 
families were sent, attended, in their own car- 
riages and on horseback. The preservation 
of beauty and womanly charm shared with 
cultural subjects the hours devoted to study at 
the famous Ann Smith. Every girl was taught 
fine embroidery and the care of the complexion, 
being especially warned against turning a door- 
knob, touching a pair of tongs or indulging in 
any other practice which might " spread the 
hand." Long gloves and deep sun-bonnets 
were constantly worn for beauty's sake, by these 
high-born Virginia maidens, Mrs. Ellet says, 
and the eating of meat and butter discouraged, 
as tending to fleshiness and fat. 

Christmas, as might be expected, was the 
crowning festivity of a Virginian home. Then 
it was that the young people, back from school, 
and their elders, returned from steering the 
ship of state at Washington, or directing the 
exports of the country at Richmond, had merry 



378 ROMANTIC DAYS 

times together in a fashion approximating the 
Enghsh Christmas Washington Irving has de- 
scribed. Weeks before the festival dawned 
jelHes, cakes, puddings and pies were carefully 
prepared and huge casks of cider and bins of 
luscious apples brought home. Then slaughtered 
fowls and tempting meats were placed in waiting. 
At midnight, on Christmas Eve, the darkies, 
to whom the festival was particularly welcome 
because of the gifts it brought them, would 
set off a big log charged with powder and blow 
an old ox-horn as a signal to begin the fun. 
The sun would scarcely be up before the visits 
of neighbors began, and soon there would be 
dancing to the tune of the fiddle, eating and 
drinking on the bounteously-spread tables and 
good stories exchanged over huge, roaring fires 
in the hall. Virginian home life was then at 
its best. For unlimited hospitality was, for 
the nonce, a duty as well as a pleasure. 



CHAPTER VII 

NEW ORLEANS 

N^EW ORLEANS does not really belong 
to the early Republic at all, for she did 
not come under the control of the United 
States until 1803. Even today, the city is in 
many ways more French than American. And 
its history, previous to its cession to America 
by France, as part of the Louisiana Purchase, 
was as varied as that of a Parisian cocotte, who, 
possessed now by this master and now by that, 
yet retains, under every change of fortune and 
ownership, the alluring and distinctively Parisian 
characteristics which constitute her charm. 

Of romance there was enough inherent in 
and growing out of these early vicissitudes of 
New Orleans to fill many books the size of this 
one. For to satisfy the needs of a virgin country 
fair young girls were exported from France under 
conditions which, though they make the blood 
boil, as one reads, set the imagination aglow as 
well. Michelet has devoted some matchless 
pages to this subject, and the writer of Manon 
Lescaut has, also, made thrilling use of this 



380 ROMANTIC DAYS 

cruel traffic in the bodies and souls of helpless 
women. The newcomers soon found husbands 
of a sort, however, among the hardy settlers of 
the new country and, by 1727, a fresh generation 
of native young people, Creoles without any 
definite knowledge of the rudeness that had pre- 
ceded their birth, had grown up in New Orleans 
and needed to be educated. To train them and 
teach them came the Ursulines, whose old con- 
vent building still stands, a monument to com- 
memorate the first institution ever founded 
in the United States expressly for the education 
of young women. Madeleine Hachard of Rouen 
was one of the original Ursulines and she has 
written of her experiences in a most engaging 
fashion. Five months it took her to make the 
voyage over; and then seven years were con- 
sumed ere the sturdy convent home built for 
the sisters was ready (in 1754) for their occupa- 
tion. What political turmoils, what tremendous 
upheavals of government the gentle Ursulines 
were to witness during the years which suc- 
ceeded! Now France, now Spain, now the 
French Republic and now the Americans had 
dominion, they were told, over them. Glad, 
indeed, they must have been, to welcome sturdy 
Andrew Jackson, when, in 1815, he came to 
shake hands as a sign that the strife and turmoil 
of their city were at an end ! To tell in a page 
or two how Andrew Jackson chanced to be the 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 381 

" hero of New Orleans " and as such went natu- 
rally, after attending mass at the Cathedral, 
to pay his respects to the devout women in 
the Ursuline convent, is no easy task. Polit- 
ically, New Orleans had been American for 
a dozen years now; but in temperament and 
in affection the settlement was French, first, 
Spanish next, and American not at all. The 
Louisianians deeply resented having been sold 
by their mother-country and felt it as a special 
insult that they had been sold to America. 
The Creoles steadfastly refused to take oflSce 
under the new government; and, since English 
was now the oflScial language, felt it incumbent 
upon them not to use it. Then, too, the delay 
in admitting the territory into the Union and the 
attendant debates as to whether the Louisianians 
were qualified for self-government had naturally 
not helped towards a better feeling between the 
purchasers and the purchased. Industrially, 
as will be easily understood, the Creoles suffered 
considerably as a result of this hostility to the 
ruling powers. Many of them were as poor as 
they were proud and had only their natural 
gaiety and their inveterate habit of dancing 
to cheer them up after long days of toil for the 
necessities of life. But in 1812, the Territory 
of Orleans being admitted to the Union as the 
State of Louisiana, the outlook brightened 
considerably; and Governor Claiborne, who 



382 ROMANTIC DAYS 

had served with tact and devotion through the 
trying period of reconstruction, received the 
compUment of being elected by the Louisianians 
to the highest office they had to bestow. 

The city was still French in its loyalties, 
however, and when, in the early summer of 
1814, there came the astounding news that 
England had overthrown Napoleon Bonaparte, 
the heart of the people instinctively ached for 
France and their rage was enkindled against 
England. Imagine, then, the violence of re- 
sentment with which the news was received that, 
as a condition of peace with France, England 
would demand the retrocession of Louisiana 
to Spain ! It was even said that Spain was tak- 
ing up arms to repossess herself of her former 
colony. 

But the arms that soon put in an appear- 
ance were English arms. And, — not to go 
further into the sinuosities of the situation, — 
it was by delivering the city from these, that 
Andrew Jackson became the " hero of New 
Orleans." The part played in the story by 
Lafitte, the " pirate," and the superb fight put 
up by General Lambert and Sir Edward Paken- 
ham on the British side make glorious reading 
for those who enjoy descriptions of battles. 
Alexander Walker, who has written a fair- 
sized book about this encounter, says that no 
campaign in modern military history is more 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 383 

brilliant than this one, in which a town of less 
than eighteen thousand inhabitants, without 
forts or any kind of defences, exposed to at- 
tacks on all sides by land and water, was able, 
with an army of less than five thousand hastily- 
raised and poorly-equipped militia, to repel 
ten thousand of the best soldiers in the world 
freshly decked out in the laurels of European 
victory. To Andrew Jackson belongs the credit 
for it all, credit which should be accorded with 
especial heartiness when it is remembered how 
grudgingly his country entrusted to him the 
opportunity for usefulness which he so mag- 
nificently improved. 

I am glad to pass over swiftly the details 
of this bitter fight in which brave men on both 
sides went down to a terrible death. But I 
like to dwell on the deepened good feeling which 
now grew up between elements which had 
previously quite failed to understand each 
other. When Jackson entered the city for the 
first time after the battle of New Orleans the 
demonstrations of joy with which he was re- 
ceived were simply boundless. The people 
attended him in crowds to his quarters in the 
Faubourg Marigny and lavished upon him such 
honors as the Southern temperament is always 
supremely happy in bestowing. In the old 
Cathedral, burnished up for the occasion, a 
solemn service of thanksgiving was held at 



384 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Jackson's request, and in the Place d'Armes, 
opposite, arose a great triumphal arch on whose 
steps the hero of the day was crowned with 
laurel at the hands of two sweet young girls 
who had been chosen for this high office. All 
the contentions, horrors, sufferings and troubles 
of the war were now forgotten. And forgotten, 
too, were the differences which had heretofore 
retarded the natural development of the city. 
In repelling a common enemy New Orleans, 
despite racial and lingual distinctions, had at 
last found itself. 

Begins now the most brilliant period of the 
city's social history, that time of many and 
varied amusements which has made the name 
of New Orleans synonymous with appealing 
and picturesque play. To join the French 
Theatre, started in a small way in 1791 by the 
refugees of St. Domingo, and enlarged early 
in the century to compete with the new and 
progressive Theatre St. Philippe,^ had come in 
1811 the Theatre d' Orleans, the centre for more 
than forty years of all that was gayest and most 
alluring in the life of the city. Travelers who 
visited New Orleans during these years have 
much to say of this playhouse and of the social 
life which emanated from it. The Duke of 
Saxe-Weimar, Eisenach, who was herein 1825-26, 
made up his mind to stay the season through, so 

^ Opened in 1808 in St. Philip's Street. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 385 

agreeable did he find the life of which it was the 
centre. 

" No day passed," he wrote afterwards, 
" which did not produce something pleasant and 
interesting. . . . Dinners, evening parties, mas- 
querades and other amusements followed close 
on each other. . . . There were masked balls 
every night of the Carnival at the French 
Theatre, which had a handsome saloon, well 
ornamented with mirrors, with three rows of 
seats arranged en amphitheatre. Tuesdays and 
Fridays were the nights for the subscription 
balls, where none but good society were ad- 
mitted. The ladies were very pretty, with a 
genteel French air, their dress, extremely elegant 
after the latest Paris fashion; they dance ex- 
cellently. Two cotillions and a waltz were 
danced in quick succession; the musicians were 
colored and pretty good. The gentlemen, who 
were far behind the ladies in elegance, did not 
long remain but hastened away to other balls, 
and so, many of the ladies were condemned 
to ' make tapestry.' " Just before the Duke's 
coming an American theatre, also, had been 
started in New Orleans, and here the visitor 
from Saxe-Weimar saw " Der Freischutz " 
given. The founder of this theatre was James 
H. Caldwell, a gentleman and scholar as well 
as a bon vivant. His suppers, criticisms, readings 
and repartees form an important part of the 



386 ROMANTIC DAYS 

theatrical tradition of New Orleans to this 
day. 

An Englishman who visited New Orleans in 
1828, — finding very little, truth to tell, to 
like about the place, — has left the following 
interesting description of the city as it then was : 
"It is built very like an old French provincial 
town: the same narrow streets, old-fashioned 
houses, and lamps suspended by a chain across 
the road. Many of the houses are, however, 
picturesque, with their large projecting roofs 
and painted sides and windows. . . . The pop- 
ulation, including blacks, is upward of 40,000, 
the greater part of which are still French or 
speak only that language. The whole place 
has quite the air of a French town. . . . Went 
to the Cathedral this morning, an old building 
of the mixed French and Spanish style of archi- 
tecture. The inside was less ornamental than 
most Catholic churches. I observed one Ma- 
donna dressed in silk according to the latest 
Parisian fashion. There are two Catholic 
churches and one small Presbyterian church 
for the whole population. . . . Walked to the 
farthest end of the town along the banks of 
the river and saw some beautiful little villas, 
secluded in gardens, where many of the tropical 
plants were growing, the banana, orange tree, 
lime etc. and the roses, jessamine and other 
flowers were in full bloom. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 387 

" I observed many well dressed women, 
this evening, sitting on the steps in front of 
their houses," continues this writer. " In most 
countries this would be considered an equivocal 
intimation of their character, but here it is 
done without impropriety by the most respect- 
able. . . . There is a public ball here, two or 
three times a week, which includes all the colored 
ladies of the place known by the name of quad- 
roons. Many I have seen are really beautiful 
girls; their blood is a mixture of Indian, African 
and French. They have generally European 
countenances and features, very black hair and 
eyes, and the complexion of the very darkest 
brunette." Which brings us squarely face to 
face with the distinctive feature of New Orleans 
— its large quadroon population and the prob- 
lems thus engendered. 

Mrs. Trollope has put the matter with ad- 
mirable conciseness: " Our stay there was 
not long enough," she writes, " to permit our 
entering into society, but I was told that 
it contained two distinct sets of people, both 
celebrated in their way for their social meetings 
and elegant entertainments. The first of these 
is composed of Creole families, who are chiefly 
planters and merchants with their wives and 
daughters; these meet together, eat together 
and are very grand and aristocratic; each of their 
balls is a little Almack's, and every portly dame 



388 ROMANTIC DAYS 

of the set is as exclusive in her principles as a 
lady patroness. The other set consists of the 
excluded but amiable quadroons, and such of 
the gentlemen of the former class as can by 
any means escape from the high places, where 
pure Creole blood swells the veins at the bare 
mention of any being tainted in the remotest 
degree with the Negro stain. Of all the preju- 
dices I have ever witnessed, this appears to me 
the most violent and the most inveterate. 
Quadroon girls, the acknowledged daughters 
of wealthy American or Creole fathers, educated 
with all of style and accomplishments which 
money can procure at New Orleans, and with all 
the decorum that care and affection can give; 
exquisitely beautiful, graceful, gentle and ami- 
able, they are not admitted, nay, are not on 
any terms admissible into the society of the 
Creole families of Louisiana. They cannot 
marry; that is to say no money can render 
a union with them legal or binding; yet, such 
is the powerful effect of their very peculiar 
grace, beauty, and sweetness of manner, that 
unfortunately they perpetually become the ob- 
jects of choice and affection. If the Creole 
ladies have privilege to exercise the awful 
power of repulsion, the gentle quadroon has 
the sweet but dangerous vengeance of possessing 
that of attraction. The unions formed with 
this unfortunate race are said to be often lasting 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 389 

and happy, as far as any unions can be so to 
which a certain degree of disgrace is attached." 

What Mrs. Trollope, however, quite over- 
looked, in her statement of this inherently 
tragic situation, Charles Dudley Warner has 
very lucidly brought out:^ the instinct, that is, 
which should exist in both races against mixture 
of blood. " Upon this rests the law of Loui- 
siana," he says, " which forbids intermarriages 
between the white and colored races. The time 
may come when the colored people will be as 
strenuous in insisting upon its execution as 
the whites, unless there is a great change in 
popular feeling, of which there is no sign at 
present. It is they who will see that there is no 
escape from the equivocal position in which 
those nearly white in appearance find themselves 
except by a rigid separation of races. The danger 
is of the reversal at any time to the original type, 
and that is always present to the offspring of any 
one with a drop of African blood in the veins. The 
pathos of this situation is infinite; and it cannot 
be lessened by saying that the prejudice about 
color is unreasonable; it exists." 

Shall we not here again qualify by saying, 
instead, that it should exist? The sad thing and 
the baffling thing about miscegenation is that 
the white father was never very greatly shocked 
by his son's illegitimate connection with a col- 

1 In Harper's Monthly Magazine for January, 1887. 



390 ROMANTIC DAYS 

ored girl, and the colored mother always felt joy 
instead of repulsion at the proposition that her 
child become the wife of a white man. Among 
the quadroon mothers this latter attitude was 
exceedingly common. The great ambition of 
the unmarried quadroon mother, especially, 
was to have her daughter pass for white and so 
get access to the privileged class. To reach 
this end, there was nothing she would not at- 
tempt, no sacrifice she was not glad to make. 
The passage of a law declaring it a penal offence 
for a public officer in the discharge of his func- 
tions, when writing down the name of any 
colored free person, to fail to add ,the quali- 
fication " homme " or " femme de couleur lihre " 
made no great difference, for officers of the law 
could be bribed and even the records of baptism 
altered. 

When it is recollected that, as early as 1788, 
there were no less than fifteen hundred of these 
free colored folk (who were never, by any chance, 
called negro) in the colony it may be imagined 
that, by the time of Mrs. Trollope's visit, they 
represented a very real social problem. So keen 
an observer as the Duke of Saxe-Weimar who, 
in the interest of science (?), was glad to frequent 
the quadroon balls, records that the women of 
this class could not be detected by the color 
of their skins, that they dressed well and grace- 
fully and, under the eyes of their mothers, con- 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 391 

ducted themselves with all modesty and pro- 
priety. None the less, by reason of their aver- 
sion to marrying men of their own color, the 
better-educated and more prosperous of these 
women naturally presented a distinct menace 
to good morals. 

How tragic the situation became when a 
decent young white fellow fell honestly in 
love with one of these quadroons has nowhere 
been better brought out in fiction than in Cable's 
exquisite story of 'Tite Poulette.^ The girl's 
mother, in this case, was a paid dancer in the Salle 
de Conde, and the interest of the reader is first 
piqued by the declaration that her child never 
goes to the quadroon ball-room where Monsieur 
John, the girl's father, had been wont, long ago, 
in the good old times of duels, to disport him- 
self with Zalli, " a palish handsome woman 
whom you would hardly have thought to be 
* colored.' " In the story, however, it turns 
out that 'Tite Poulette is not Zalli 's child at 
all and so is free to marry the honest Dutchman 
who loves her and who has been struggling with 
all his might against a deep conviction that, 
in spite of his inclinations, the blacks and the 
whites should not mingle their blood. In actual 
life the girl would still have been a quadroon and 
the problem would have remained. 

' In Old Creole Days, by George W. Cable, New York, Charles 
Scribner's Sons. 



392 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Many of the free colored men were quite 
prosperous and happy, several owned cotton 
and sugar plantations, which were worked by 
numerous slaves, and to which such profits ac- 
crued that they could easily send their children 
to France for the best possible education. 
Those who remained in France often attained 
distinction in scientific and literary circles, 
while those who returned to New Orleans and 
became successful musicians, merchants, real 
estate brokers and the like had as much ob- 
jection to associating with the blacks on terms 
of equality as any white man could have to 
associating with them. At the Orleans theatre 
they attended their mothers, wives and sisters 
in the second tier, reserved exclusively for them, 
and where no white person of either sex would 
have been permitted to intrude. But they were 
not admitted to the quadroon balls, and when 
white gentlemen visited their families it was the 
accepted etiquette for them never to be present. 
The quadroons of the humbler classes were me- 
chanics, and were most respectable; they gener- 
ally married women of their own status and 
led quiet lives in middle-class comfort. 

Among the Creole women Mrs. Edward 
Livingston was long the acknowledged leader. 
Born in the island of St. Domingo in 1782, of 
ancient and distinguished French family, she 
early acquired a passion for books and taught 



WW" 



■IS 










Copyrighted by the Detroit Publishing Co. 

ANDREW JACKSON. 

From the portrait by Sully in the possession of the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washing- 
ton. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 393 

herself to enjoy the Hterature of many languages. 
At the age of thirteen she was married to 
Moreau de Lassy, a French gentleman of fortune, 
who took her to Jamaica to reside. But at 
eighteen she was left a widow and, just before 
the Revolution, returned to her parents in St. 
Domingo. Obliged to flee, when the insurrection 
broke out, she found herself in New Orleans 
just as the city was undergoing its transition 
to an American possession. Thus she soon 
made the acquaintance of Edward Livingston, 
a widower twenty years her senior and a lawyer 
of great ability. Mrs. Livingston's uncle, M. 
Jules d'Avezac, who became the first director 
of the College of New Orleans, was one of the 
inmates of the Livingstons' Chartres Street 
home, a house soon known all over the South 
by reason of the warm welcome it accorded to 
strangers of distinction and because conversation 
of the very highest order might always be there 
enjoyed. Here General Jackson was entertained 
at dinner just before the battle of New Orleans, 
bearing himself with such dignity, it is interest- 
ing to add, that Mrs. Livingston then surrendered 
for all time to his extraordinary personal charm. 
Thus when the " hero of New Orleans " be- 
came President of the United States this lady, 
who was then herself living in Washington, 
was able and glad to render many friendly 
services to Mrs. Donelson, who acted as mis- 



394 ROMANTIC DAYS 

tress of the White House for her widowed 
uncle. 

In 1822 Mr. Livingston left New Orleans 
to enter political life in Washington, represent- 
ing Louisiana as a member of the lower house. 
Afterwards he became a senator, and later still 
Secretary of State under Jackson. Meanwhile 
Mrs. Livingston's salon became famous in 
Washington just as it had been in New Orleans. 
Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Wirt, Chief Justice 
Marshall, Joseph Story and John Randolph all 
flocked to the side of this lovely woman, con- 
cealing, for the nonce, in her presence, the bitter 
differences which divided them in the House or 
Senate. John Randolph, who could give un- 
qualified approval to very few people or things 
in life, never wavered in his allegiance to Mrs. 
Livingston, writing her husband when, in 1833, 
that gentleman had been offered the position 
of Minister to France, '' Let me conjure you 
to accept the mission, for which you are better 
qualified than any man in the United States. 
In Mrs. Livingston, to whom present my warm- 
est respects, you have a most able coadjutor. 
Dowdies, dowdies won't do for European courts, 
Paris especially. There and at London, the 
character of the minister's wife is almost as 
important as his own. It is the very place for 
her. There she would dazzle and charm." 

The only daughter of the Livingstons, Cora, 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 395 

who became Mrs. Thomas Pennant Barton 
just before her father left for France, was a New 
Orleans belle at sixteen, a Washington belle 
at twenty and a Paris belle during the years of 
her young wifehood. Having derived from her 
father a sound knowledge of the political 
questions of the day and from her mother grace, 
beauty and a high degree of social charm, it 
is no wonder that Josiah Quincy, a specialist 
in descriptions of fair young women, was able 
to ascribe to her his choicest and his most en- 
thusiastic adjectives. I like especially, however, 
the paragraph with which he ends his tribute, 
linking as it does the Cora Livingston of New 
Orleans with the gracious Mrs. Barton whose 
name is now memorialized in the valuable Bar- 
ton collection ^ of folio Shakespeares and some 
twelve thousand related volumes in the posses- 
sion of the Boston Public Library. " Interesting 
old volumes they are," says Quincy, " highly 
prized by the many owners through whose 
fingers they have slipped; and containing, as 
we all know, some good descriptions of what 
is delightful in woman. But there will be one 
association the less with them when I am no 

^ Mr. Barton was a man of scholarly tastes, and accumulated 
a library which, at the time of his death, was considered one of the 
most valuable private collections in America. He bequeathed it 
to his wife with the request that she make such disposition of it as 
best pleased her. Shortly before her death she arranged for its 
transfer, in its entirety, to the city of Boston. 



396 ROMANTIC DAYS 

longer able to climb the stairs which lead to Bates 
Hall. There will then be no one left to tell 
how their last private possessor once seemed 
to fill the most perfect outline of a charming woman 
that the poet has drawn,'' 



CHAPTER VIII 

BOSTON AND SOME OTHER CITIES OF NEW ENG- 
LAND 

AN Englishman, who was a resident of 
Boston at about the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, is reputed to have de- 
clared that everything essential to the most 
agreeable society existed there " with one ex- 
ception and that is the spirit of sociability." 
In the forties the Bostonian's notion of cordial 
hospitality seems to have been inviting the 
stranger within his gates to occupy a place in 
the family pew at church; Dickens says that 
on his visit to the city he was offered as many 
sittings as would have accommodated a score or 
two of grown up families! And there is even a 
story — let us hope it is apocryphal — of a 
certain Bostonian who, in return for cordial 
entertainment enjoyed by him and his wife 
while in Europe, invited his former hostess 
to call at his house on a Sunday evening after 
tea, at which time his wife and himself would 
go with her to church and give her a place in 
their pew! 



398 ROMANTIC DAYS 

All these carefully-restrained overtures to- 
wards entertainment were of the middle nineteenth 
century or later, however. Tracing backward the 
history ^ of Boston's attitude toward the visitor 
from without, the hospitality-temperature will 
be found constantly on the rise. Fanny Kemble, 
who was here in the thirties, has only praise for 
Boston's kindliness in this way. Philip Hone, 
who came a little earlier and wrote about his 
experiences, is even more enthusiastic — and so 
it goes until, when we get back to the time of the 
Marquis de Chastellux's visit, we find Bostonians 
as cordial and as resourceful in the matter of 
making their guests happy as — even Southern- 
ers could be. Certainly, as we read de Chas- 
tellux's account of his visit, we are convinced 
that he had a thoroughly " good time " while 
here. 

" Although I knew that Mr. Dumas had pre- 
pared me a lodging," he writes, " I found it 
more convenient to alight to Mr. Brackett's, 
the Cromwell's Head, where I dined. After 
dinner I went to the lodgings prepared for me at 
Mr. Colson's a glover in the main street. As 
I was dressing to wait on \he Marquis de 
Vaudreuil, he called upon me, and after per- 
mitting me to finish the business of the toilet, 
we went together to Dr. Cooper's and thence 

^ See Old Boston Days and Ways and Romantic Days in Old 
Boston. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 399 

to the association ball where I was received by 
my old acquaintance Mr. Brick [Breck] who was 
one of the managers. Here I remained till 
ten o'clock; the Marquis de Vaudreuil opened 
the ball with Mrs. Temple. Then followed the 
minuet which did honor to the French nation; 
but I am sorry to say that the contrast was 
considerable between the Frenchman and the 
Americans who are in general very awkward, 
particularly in the minuet. 

" The prettiest woman-dancers were Mrs. 
Jarvis, her sister Miss Betsy Broom and Mrs. 
Whitmore. The ladies were all well dressed, 
but with less elegance and refinement than at 
Philadelphia. The assembly room was superb 
in a good style of architecture, well decorated 
and well lighted. . . . And there is good order 
and every necessary refreshment. 

" The 15th in the morning M. de Vaudreuil 
and M. de Tombes, the French Consul, called 
on me the moment I was going out to visit 
them. After some conversation we went first 
to wait on Gov. Hancock who was ill of the 
gout and unable to receive us; thence we went 
to Mr. Bowdoin's, Mr. Brick's and Mr. Cushing's, 
the deputy Governor. I dined with the Marquis 
de Vaudreuil and after dinner drank tea at 
Mr. Bowdoin's who engaged us to supper, only 
allowing M. de Vaudreuil and myself half an hour 
to pay a visit to Mrs. Cushing. The evening was 



400 ROMANTIC DAYS 

spent agreeably in a company of about twenty 
persons, among whom was Mrs. Wliitmore and 
young Mrs. Bowdoin, who was a new acquaint- 
ance for me, not having seen her at Boston when 
I was there the preceding year. She has a mild 
and agreeable countenance, and a character 
corresponding with her appearance. 

" The next morning I went with the Marquis 
de Vaudreuil to pay some other visits, and 
dined with Mr. Brick where were upwards of 
thirty persons and among others Mrs. Tudor, 
Mrs. Morton, Mrs. Swan, etc. The two former 
understood French; Mrs. Tudor in particular 
knows it perfectly and speaks it tolerably well. 
I was very intimate with her during my stay 
at Boston and found her possessed not only of 
understanding but of grace and delicacy in her 
mind and manners. After dinner tea was served 
which, being over, Mr. Brick in some sort in- 
sisted, but very politely, on our staying to 
supper. This supper was on table exactly four 
hours after we rose from dinner; it may be im- 
agined, therefore, that we did not eat much, 
but the Americans paid some little compliments 
to it; for in general they eat less than we do 
at their repasts, but as often as you choose, 
which in my opinion is a very bad method. 
Their aliments behave with their stomachs, 
as we do in France on paying visits : they never 
depart till they see others enter." 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 401 

In Portsmouth the Marquis had been enter- 
tained with similar generosity, particularly by 
the Langdons. " After dinner we went to 
drink tea with Mr. Langdon," we read. " He 
is a handsome man and of a noble carriage; 
he has been a member of Congress and is now 
one of the first people of the country. His 
house is elegant and well-furnished and the 
apartments admirably well wainscotted. Mrs. 
Langdon, his wife, is young, fair and tolerably 
handsome, but I conversed less with her than 
with her husband in whose favour I was preju- 
diced, from knowing that he had displayed great 
courage and patriotism at the time of Burgoyne's 
expedition. ... As he was marching day and 
night, reposing himself only in the woods, a 
negro servant who attended him said to him, 
' Master, you are hurting yourself, but no matter; 
you are going to fight for liberty; I also should 
suffer patiently if I had liberty to defend.' 
' Don't let that stop you,' replied Mr. Langdon. 
* From this moment you are free.' " 

On the way back from Portsmouth the Mar- 
quis made a pleasurable stay at Newburyport, 
and of that town, also, he gives us an inter- 
esting snap-shot picture. " After passing the 
ferry in little flat boats which held only five 
horses each, we went to Mr. Davenport's inn, 
where we found a good dinner ready. I had 
letters from Mr. Wentworth to Mr. John 



402 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Tracy, the most considerable merchant in the 
place; but before I had time to send them he 
had heard of my arrival, and as I was rising 
from table entered the room and very politely 
invited me to pass the evening with him. . . . 
His house stands a mile from the town in a 
very beautiful situation ; but of this I could my- 
self form no judgment as it was already night. 
I went, however, by moonlight to see the garden 
which is composed of different terraces. There 
is likewise a hot-house and a number of young 
trees. The house is very handsome and well- 
furnished and everything breathes that air of 
magnificence accompanied by simplicity which 
is only to be found among merchants. The 
evening passed rapidly by the aid of agreeable 
conversation and a few glasses of punch. The 
ladies we found assembled were Mrs. Tracy, 
her two sisters, and their cousin. Miss Lee. 
Mrs. Tracy has an agreeable and a sensible 
countenance and her manners correspond with 
her appearance. At ten o'clock an excellent 
supper was served, we drank good wine. Miss 
Lee sang and prevailed upon Messieurs de 
Vaudreuil and Talleyrand to sing also: towards 
midnight the ladies withdrew but we continued 
drinking Madeira and Xery." 

So far as we know, this particular visitor from 
over-seas did not venture out to Quincy in the 
course of his New England tour. Had he done 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 403 

so, there would have been an enthusiastic ac- 
count, I am sure, of hospitahty enjoyed in one 
old house there. With the single exception of 
Mount Vernon there is probably in all America 
no Colonial mansion of more intrinsic interest 
than the Dorothy Q House in Quincy, Massachu- 
setts, which the Colonial Dames of the Old 
Bay State bought about five years ago and now 
maintain as a show -place for historical and other 
pilgrims. Great credit is due the members of 
this organization for the well-nigh perfect man- 
ner in which the house has been made fresh and 
attractive without sacrificing in the slightest 
the traditions of Colonial architecture or doing 
violence to any one of its romantic associations. 

The Dorothy Q House is almost as old as the 
Commonwealth itself — the rear part was built 
in 1636 — and is associated with many of the 
distinguished men and women who made the 
Commonwealth and established its fame. The 
estate passed out of the hands of the Quincys a 
century ago; but in Colonial times almost all the 
eminent members of that race were either born 
there or lived there part of their days. John 
Adams and John Quincy Adams frequently 
visited the inmates of this home, and its hos- 
pitable roof has sheltered many others known 
to fame, such as Sir Harry Vane, Judge Sewall, 
Benjamin Franklin and Sir Harry Frankland. 

Visitors who today go to Quincy and seek 



404 ROMANTIC DAYS 

out this venerable mansion find much of interest 
to them, even if they be quite ignorant of the 
historic side of the house. None the less the 
various rooms should ideally be enjoyed in 
the light of the hallowed traditions with which 
they are indissolubly linked. Otherwise the 
quaint furniture might just as well be in the 
show-rooms of an enterprising dealer in an- 
tiques. 

Let us begin with the garden, here an integral 
part of the house, as all Colonial gardens were. 
Approaching from the street, one walks back 
several hundred yards through magnolia and 
mulberry trees set off with rhododendron, along 
a narrow path neatly bordered with a rehc of 
that famous box upon which Dorothy Q dried 
her laces nearly two hundred years ago. At 
the left is the brook which the town of Quincy 
has lately dammed up and over which there will 
soon be placed a rustic bridge such as was there 
when Agnes Surriage came to the house with 
her handsome Sir Harry Frankland, and the 
whole party fished for eels, which they merrily 
cooked for supper. 

At the left as one enters the noble front door 
is the parlor, with its renowned Venus and 
Cupid wall-paper, which was brought from Paris 
expressly for the wedding of John Hancock 
and his Dorothy Q. The design shows double 
panels upon which very natural-looking Birds 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 405 

of Paradise disport themselves. In one Cupid 
appears to be wooing the shy Venus; in the 
other she has dispatched him with an affirm- 
ative answer, and he is proceeding happily away 
through pendent wreaths of red flowers. It 
seems a pity that paper so eminently fitted to 
nuptial rites should not have graced the Han- 
cock wedding after all. But English spies were 
keeping a keen lookout for Patriot Hancock 
about that time, and he was obliged to go into 
hiding in the Lexington parsonage (now known 
as the Clark House), where his father had been 
born. To visit him his aunt, Mme. Lydia 
Hancock, and his fiancee, Dorothy, took coach 
April 18, 1775; and it was the resultant happy 
meeting which Paul Revere interrupted when, 
having ridden for his life to warn Hancock that 
the British were approaching, he arrived in 
Lexington about midnight of that memorable 
day. Hancock had, of course, to flee again; 
the ladies meanwhile withdrew to Fairfield, 
Connecticut, the home of Rev. Thaddeus Burr, 
another kinsman. And in spite of the Cupids 
trailing their pink and blue wreaths over the 
parlor walls of the home at Quincy the wedding 
they were to celebrate very nearly failedj to 
come off. 

For fascinating Aaron Burr, whom no woman 
was ever able to resist, came visiting his uncle 
Thaddeus just then, and it required all Aunt 



406 ROMANTIC DAYS 

Lydia Hancock's watchfulness to prevent an 
elopement as a result of the desperate flirtation 
which ensued between him and Dorothy Q. 
On August 28, 1776, the postponed wedding 
was celebrated at Fairfield, however, John 
Hancock taking his wife directly to Philadelphia, 
where they soon set up in a fine house of their 
own.^ 

There is much, however, besides the wedding 
wall-paper to interest us in the parlor of the 
Dorothy Q House. For the room is rich in 
beautiful historic pieces. A Chippendale look- 
ing-glass with a delicate decoration of raised 
gold wheat on its frame attracts universal ad- 
miration. Only one other similar glass is known, 
and that reposes in the Dedham Historical 
House. Beneath the wheat looking-glass is 
a card -table of exquisite design, with corner 
stands for candles, grooves for chips and a 
secret draw^er. Near by is an old Dutch chair 
worm-eaten with age, and flanking it a six-legged 
table — one of the freaks of early cabinet- 
makers — which supports the oldest known of 
hour-glasses. 

Adjoining the parlor is the music-room 
with its quaint old-fashioned spinet. Why do 
we not have spinets in these days? This 

^ See my chapter " John Hancock and his Dorothy " in Old 
Boston Days and Ways. Much hitherto unavailable data about Han- 
cock will doubtless be found, too, in John Hancock: The Picturesque 
Patriot, by Lorenzo Sears, just published. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 407 

question has been haunting me ever since I 
enjoyed the privilege of playing the " WilHam 
Fether, London " instrument in the music- 
room of the Dorothy Q House. The finest grand 
piano that I have ever touched yields no such 
pleasure. The tone produced by the picking of 
the goose-quills against the strings is at once 
delicate and satisfying. On the case one is 
promised, in impressive Latin, *' oblivion to 
cares of life while playing." For once an ad- 
vertisement does not overstate. Music-lovers, 
revive the spinet! 

Upstairs, over the parlor, is the guest-or- 
bridal-chamber, containing a bed built for 
Lafayette's use when on his New England visit 
and now loaned to this house. In the room the 
bed adorns Washington, Sir Harry Frankland, of 
romantic memory, and Benjamin Franklin have 
all slept. The last-named presented to his host, 
after one of his visits, the Franklin stove there 
today. 

Another very delightful place of pilgrimage, 
which has an intimate connection with New 
England of the early Republican period, is 
the hospitable brick mansion in Portland, Maine, 
in which (1807) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
first saw the light. Though it is now in the 
heart of a busy city, this house, when built, 
was on the outskirts of the town surrounded by 
rolling green fields, with the ocean dimly dis- 



408 ROMANTIC DAYS 

cernible in one direction and the austere White 
Mountains standing grandly out against the 
sky at the western horizon. 

General Peleg Wadsworth conveyed all the 
way from Philadelphia the bricks for his hand- 
some new home for, before the date of its erec- 
tion (1785), Portland had no brick houses. The 
man who could afford such a house as this one, 
at a time when building materials brought such 
prices as they did immediately after the Revolu- 
tionary War, must needs have been a person 
of prominence and property. So, indeed, we 
find General Wadsworth to have been. Grad- 
uated from Harvard in 1769, he was among the 
first to organize a company to resist the tyranny 
of the mother country. In the fortification of 
Roxbury and Dorchester Heights he rendered 
valuable service, and in 1778 he was appointed 
adjutant-general of Massachusetts. A year 
or two later he was placed in command of the 
troops on the Maine coast. All this time, 
however, the doughty soldier was a citizen of 
Plymouth, Mass. It was not until 1784 that 
he proceeded from the Pilgrims' country to 
Portland, bringing with him his wife (who had 
been Miss Elizabeth Bartlett, of Plymouth), a 
lady of fine manners and all womanly virtues, 
" who was alike his friend and comforter in 
hours of trial and the grace and ornament of 
his house in the days of prosperity." 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 409 

The associations of this house have been al- 
most all those of prosperity. I have a shrewd 
suspicion that this is one reason the place is 
so popular. One likes to trace in imagination 
the many pleasant happenings with which the 
old furniture and the curious kitchen things 
have been intimately connected, and to recall 
that the piano, which is still in the parlor at 
the left of the entrance hall, was the first ever 
brought to Portland, and elicited so much ad- 
miring curiosity that the country people were 
wont to stand around the windows, looking 
in when music was being played. How fraught 
with suggestions of real neighborliness and 
abundant leisure is the anecdote! 

When the Wadsworth family moved into 
their fine new house there were already six 
children, Zilpah, the future mother of the poet, 
being then a maid of seven or eight. That she 
had something of the literary gift her distin- 
guished son was to possess to such marked degree 
is shown by this vivid description she wrote of 
her father as he looked in the early days of 
their residence under this fine old roof tree : 

*' Imagine to yourself a man of middle age, 
well proportioned, with a military air, and who 
carried himself so truly that many thought him 
tall. His dress, a bright scarlet coat, buff small- 
clothes and vest, full ruffled bosom, ruflOies 
over the hands, white stockings, shoes with 



410 ROMANTIC DAYS 

silver buckles, white cravat bow in front, 
hair well powdered and tied behind in a club, 
so called." To this, one has only to add a 
cocked hat of black felt to get General Peleg 
Wadsworth exactly as he looks today in the 
portrait which hangs over the mantel -piece of 
the sitting-room. 

In the stately parlor of this house were mar- 
ried, in 1804, the parents of America's dearest 
poet. Zilpah Wadsworth had now grown to 
be a beautiful and gracious maiden whom 
Stephen Longfellow, a young Harvard graduate 
just beginning the practice of law, accounted 
himself very fortunate to win for his bride. 
The Longfellows had for two or three genera- 
tions lived in Gorham, Maine, where father and 
son were in turn lawyers of prominence and 
where their old home still stands. The poet's 
father grew up on this Gorham farm. 

In 1808, the year after the birth of the poet, 
the newly-wed Longfellows definitely took 
possession of Wadsworth House. General Peleg 
had the year preceding built another noble man- 
sion for himself — Wadsworth Hall — at Hiram, 
Maine, and had there removed to spend the 
remainder of his days. The Portland house 
thus came naturally enough to be the home of 
his favorite daughter and of his lawyer son-in- 
law. Here, therefore, where their life together 
had begun, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Longfellow 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 411 

spent many happy years. Here the poet's 
six brothers and sister were born. And here 
Anne Longfellow (Mrs. George Pierce) passed 
almost her entire life, leaving the house, upon 
her death in 1901, to the Maine Historical 
Society as a memorial to her gifted brother. 

No more fitting monument could well be 
imagined. For it is with these hallowed 
walls that all the home thoughts and reminis- 
cences of him who is pre-eminently America's 
Poet of Home are bound up. Moreover, it 
was from this very house that the gifted boy 
stole out at the age of thirteen to drop into the 
box outside the ofiice of the Portland Gazette 
his first published verses, " The Battle of Lovell's 
Pond." Other poems known to have been 
written wholly or in part in this house, are 
" Musings," " The Spirit of Poetry," " Burial 
of the Minnisink," " Where from the Eyes of 
Day," " Song of the Birds," " Changed," " The 
Lighthouse," and " The Rainy Day." As one 
sits at the desk made famous by the writing of 
this last named poem one may still see, glancing 
out into the garden, the vista that met the poet's 
eye. This room is now called the " Den " or 
** Henry's Room," but it was originally the 
sleeping apartment of General Wads worth. The 
walls are decorated with paper brought from 
Paris sixty years ago. 

Scarcely less interesting than the parlor 



412 ROMANTIC DAYS 

with its old-time piano and the den with its 
ink-stained mahogany desk is the family sitting- 
room, which was once the law oflSce of the 
poet's father. Here are dozens of pieces of 
furniture which fill the collector with envy. 
But the charm of it all lies in the fact that the 
chairs and tables, the andirons and the pictures 
have associations as well as age. The carpet is 
the same as was upon the floor at the time of the 
poet's last visit to his old home, and it was 
against this mantel that he often leaned as a 
youth. 

The poet's chair still stands by his favorite 
windows; near it is a sewing-table that was his 
mother's, and, on the other side, the chair his 
father liked best. On the adjacent wall hangs 
a gilt-framed mirror whose quaint picture and 
row of tiny gilt balls stamp it as of his grand- 
mother Wadsworth's day. 

Just across, a doorway leads into a small 
room built on by Stephen Longfellow for his law 
oflfice but now sacred to shelves and cupboards. 
There is here a single window commanding the 
old garden; that this room was once a favorite 
writing place for the boy poet we must believe 
from a letter sent to his sister Elizabeth during 
his first visit abroad in 1829: "My poetic 
career is finished. Since I left America I have 
scarcely put two lines together . . . and no 
soft poetic ray has irradiated my heart since the 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 413 

Goths and Vandals crossed the Rubicon of 
the front entry and turned the Sanctum Sanc- 
torum of the ' Little Room ' into a china 
closet." 

No part of the house, however, is more inter- 
esting to students of the early Republican 
period than the kitchen, with its capacious 
fireplace and its curious outfit of utensils long 
since retired from use. The fireplace itself is 
especially worth examining because of the figure 
of a fish on an iron plate set into the brickwork on 
the back, a thing of which one of the poet's 
brothers has spoken as "a fish baked in 
effigy." Here the crane still supports the pots 
and kettles that hung from the hook a century 
ago and all about the hearth are articles which 
in name as well as in use are quite strange to 
visitors of the twentieth century, a Dutch 
oven, a tin kitchen, a plate warmer, apple 
roaster, coffee roaster and mills, a bread toaster, 
and waffle irons which look like a huge pair of 
tongs. Built into the brickwork at the left is 
the oven for baking, and at the right is a boiler 
with the small opening underneath in which 
a fire was made on washing days. The kitchen 
dresser near-by is likewise attractive with its 
display of well-shone Britannia tin and earthen 
ware. Here may be seen the bread tray used 
by General Lafayette when he visited Portland 
in 1825. Here, too, are candle moulds and Ian- 



414 ROMANTIC DAYS 

terns and the steelyards with which the babies 
of the family were weighed. 

Directly over the parlor, in which the mother 
of the poet was married, is her bedroom in 
which she died. Near here is the cradle in 
which the baby Henry was rocked, as well as 
a priceless collection of old gowns and bonnets, 
among them the little cap first worn by that 
head which was later to be crowned with laurel. 
Here, too — and this is of special interest to 
visitors — is a copy of a long-forgotten poem 
in which Henry Longfellow protested against 
the removal of this old building when some one 
wished to replace it by a more modern structure. 

The room to which the poet came with his 
bride is the guest chamber across the hall. 
The tall, four-post bedstead, with its dainty 
hangings of dimity and its quaint coverlet sug- 
gestive of a bygone day, is the same now as then. 
By its side is a wood-bottom rocking-chair 
which belonged to the first mistress of the house. 
It was probably in this room that the poet 
slept during frequent visits made to the house 
after he became famous. For he never lost his 
love for the home of his childhood and he rejoiced 
greatly that the conflagration of July 4, 1866, 
which obliterated so many interesting landmarks 
in Portland, left " the family house unburned! " 

Longfellow's later life is of course associated 
chiefly with his beautiful Cambridge home, to 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 415 

which he first (in 1837) went as a boarder, 
being then a young, unmarried professor. The 
house was at this time the home of Mrs. Andrew 
Craigie, whose husband had bought it (in 1793), 
from a brother of that Tracy we found enter- 
taining the Marquis de Chastellux when at New- 
buryport. 

Cambridge was, in those days, a mere country 
village. If you would be thoroughly convinced 
of this look up Josiah Quincy's vivid account — 
in Figures of the Past — of a certain turkey -shoot- 
ing he once witnessed there of which young Larz 
Anderson of Cincinnati was the hero. 

For our present purposes, however, it is more 
to the point to turn, in this same delightful 
volume, to Mr. Quincy's description of Daniel 
Webster's Boston reception on June 17, 1825. 

" Summer Street was as light as day, the 
houses were brilliantly illuminated and a fine 
band was stationed a few yards from Mr. 
Webster's door. The rooms were filled with 
strangers from all parts of the country. . . . Mr. 
and Mrs. Webster received the compliments 
of the hour with great dignity and simplicity. 
Of the lady my journal says that ' she seemed 
highly to enjoy the success and distinction of 
her husband, but showed not the slightest 
symptom of vanity or elation.' 

" Among the ladies to whom I was presented 
was the famous Fanny Wright — a tall young 



416 ROMANTIC DAYS 

person of about thirty, of pleasing countenance 
and wearing her hair cut short to the head. She 
had just returned to America with all the glory 
of having written a book about us. She was 
destined to be still better known, at a later date, 
as the promulgator of unpopular theories and 
as the first of practical abolitionists. The colony 
of emancipated slaves which she established in 
Tennessee was one of those failures which are 
better than many things which the world calls 
successful. 

" Lafayette was, of course, at Mr. Webster's 
party. But the last evening reception given the 
distinguished Frenchman [before leaving] Bos- 
ton took place on Sunday, at the house of Mr. 
R. C. Derby. I have noted that, on this oc- 
casion, the General was reintroduced to a lady 
with whom he had danced a minuet forty-seven 
years before. 

" Mr. Derby's establishment was very stylish 
and fashionable; and the names of the guests, 
with such titles as we were so happy as to pos- 
sess, were loudly proclaimed by a servant as 
we ascended the stairs. My sister's journal 
. . . mentions that the arrangement of the 
rooms was different from any that she had seen 
before. * The principal drawing-room was large 
and brilliantly lighted, and opening from it was 
a suite of smaller apartments, some lined with 
paintings, others hung with silk, and illuminated 




MRS. R. C. DERBY. 



From the miniature by Malbone in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

New York. 



ii 





WW 



MRS. EDWARD BLAKE. 

From the miniature by Malbone in the possession of Miss Julia Robins, Boston. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 417 

by shade-lamps and lights in alabaster vases, 
to produce the effect of moonlight. These apart- 
ments terminated in a boudoir only large enough 
to hold two or three people. It was hung with 
light blue silk and furnished with sofas and cur- 
tains of the same hue. It also contained an im- 
mense mirror, placed so as to reflect the rest 
of the rooms.' This was th-e Boston elegance 
of 1825." ^ And then there follows a glowing 
description of the charms of Miss Emily Mar- 
shall, " who," Quincy ^ declares, " as completely 
filled the ideal of the lovely and the feminine 

1 In the Boston Directory for 1825, a very cosy little volume, the 
addresses of some of the people mentioned by Mr. Quincy are given 
as follows: Josiah Marshall, house 24 Franklin Place; R. C. Derby, 
27 Chestnut street; Daniel Webster, 10 Summer street. Mrs. 
Blake was the widow of Edward Blake, Jr., and though she enter- 
tained in her beautiful house on Bowdoin Square she cannot be 
found in the Directory for that year, inasmuch as it was not then 
the custom to list women householders. Mrs. Blake's maiden name 
was Sarah Parkman. She was born October 17, 1775, and died April 
10, 1847. The miniature herewith reproduced is by Malbone and 
has often been pronounced the most beautiful he ever did. It is 
now in the possession of the subject's grand-daughter. 

^ As this is the last time that the name Josiah Quincy will be 
mentioned in this volume it may be well here to distinguish between 
the various worthies thus designated. The Josiah Quincy who 
visited Charleston before the Revolution and wrote of his experiences 
there was born in Boston, February 23, 1744 and died at sea, off 
Gloucester, Mab.j., April 26, 1775, a victim of the pulmonary con- 
sumption to relieve which his Southern trip had been undertaken. 
His son was the president of Harvard College, and one of the first 
mayors of Boston. His son (born in Boston 1802, died in Quincy 
1882) was from 1845-49 mayor of Boston. But he is best known — 
this third Josiah Quincy — as " member of the class of 1821, Harvard 
College," and author of Figures of the Past. 



418 ROMANTIC DAYS 

as did Webster the ideal of the intellectual and 
the masculine. . . . Miss Emily Marshall," he 
insists, " was simply perfect in face and figure — 
and perfectly charming in manners as well. . . . 
On the seventh of February, 1823, in my descrip- 
tion of Mrs. Blake's party come the words: 
' Miss Marshall stood unrivalled. She is the 
most beautiful creature I ever saw.' At Mathews's 
last appearance before a Boston audience (Jan- 
uary 28, 1823) I found her ' making the theatre 
beautiful by her presence.' Again (it is the 
night of February 13, the year following) a 
house in Franklin Street, just by the theatre, 
is lighted for company, and Miss Marshall 
receives her guests with such infinite grace 
of manner that one of them, at least, does not 
rest before he sets down his admiration in black 
and white. . . . With her no struggle for social 
recognition was necessary. She simply stood 
before us a reversion to that faultless type of 
structure which artists have imagined in the 
past and to that ideal loveliness of feminine dis- 
position which poets have placed in the mythical 
golden age." This praise seems extravagant, 
but when it is added that workmen went with- 
out their dinners to gaze upon Miss Marshall's 
lovely face, that audiences at the theatre rose 
when she entered, to render homage to her beauty, 
and that William Lloyd Garrison went to a 
church presided over by a " stand -pat " parson 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 419 

for the sake of feasting surreptitiously on her 
sweet countenance, we are convinced that Quincy 
Hed not. 

PhiHp Hone's Diary gives us the promised 
ghmpse of the cordial way in which Boston 
entertained a visitor from New York in these 
early Republican days. On September 8, 1828, 
he writes, " After breakfast I commenced my 
Boston rambles and saw most of the lions of 
this fine city. Mr. Quincy, the Mayor, took 
us through the new market-house, which is 
his hobby, and well worth seeing. The length 
of this splendid receptacle of beef, poultry and 
potatoes is five hundred and thirty-six feet, 
its width fifty feet, and the improvement of 
the vicinity consequent upon its erection renders 
it an object of admiration. We visited Faneuil 
Hall, the armory, the noble art museum, its 
exhibition room (where at present is exhibited 
a collection of Stuart's portraits, for the benefit 
of his family) , the new hotel building at the cor- 
ner of Tremont and School streets, the docks etc. 
After dinner, Mr. H. G. Otis called and took 
me out to Quincy to visit the President, but 
we found that he had departed suddenly, this 
afternoon, for Washington. We had, however, 
a pleasant ride, saw the Quincy railroad and 
quarry of granite, and returned to town by 
way of Roxbury. In the evening I went for a 
short time to the theatre in Tremont street; 



420 ROMANTIC DAYS 

a handsome theatre, but not a first-rate com- 
pany." The following day another visit was 
made to Quincy for the sake of viewing further 
the railroad and the quarry, and '* on our return, 
we stopped to see a handsome edifice in the 
village of ^ Quincy, — a new meeting-house ^ 
nearly finished. It is a beautiful piece of archi- 
tecture, and its massive columns of granite are 
probably the best specimens of that fine material 
which have yet been brought into use. . . . We 
took tea with Mrs. Quincy and returned to 
Boston in the evening." 

Sunday morning finds this visitor at St. 
Paul's Church listening to a sermon from Alonzo 
Potter; in the afternoon he takes tea " at 
Colonel Perkins's at Brookline who has one 
of the finest places in the neighborhood; his 
wall fruit and grapery are justly celebrated, 
and are now in great perfection." On Tuesday 
Waltham engages Mr. Hone's attention. There 
he visits the " celebrated seat and ground of 
Mr. Lyman, and the splendid mansion of the 
late Governor Gore, where we were kindly re- 
ceived and entertained by Mrs. Gore. ... I 
dined at General Theodore Lyman's, who lives 
in very handsome style, and has the best library 
I have seen in Boston. Passed the evening with 
a party at Mrs. Cunningham's. This lady,Vho 

^ It is here that both John Quincy Adams and his father now lie 
buried. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 421 

is lately married, is the daughter of Rufus 
Amory." 

Why all Boston visitors had to be dragged out 
to Quincy to view the quarries is not at all 
clear. Fanny Kemble, who acted at the first 
Tremont Theatre — on the site now occupied 
by Tremont Temple — in the spring of 1833 
started on this expedition of pleasure (?) at 
six in the morning and so rode twenty miles be- 
fore breakfast! No wonder she characterized 
the feat as "a piece of virtue bordering on 
heroism." 

Yet she had her reward. " For," she says, 
" the country we rode through was extremely 
pretty, so indeed I think all the country round 
Boston is; the only deficiency is water, running 
water, I mean, for there are several beautiful 
pools in its vicinity, and, turn which way you 
will, the silver shield of the sea shining against 
the horizon is a lovely feature of the landscape. 
But there are no rivulets, no brooks, no spark- 
ling, singing water courses to refresh one's senses 
as one rides across the fields and through the 
woodlands. 

"But for the climate," continues this charm- 
ing actress, " I should like to live in Boston very 
much. My stay here has been delightful. It 
is in itself a lovely place, and the country round 
it is charming. The people are intellectual, 
and have been most abundantly good natured 



422 ROMANTIC DAYS 

and kind to me." Among the houses at which 
the Kembles were entertained was that of Dr. 
George Parkman who was murdered by Pro- 
fessor Webster in 1849. 

. Here^ Fanny met John Quincy Adams, whose 
remarks on Shakespeare made her greatly 
wonder. The matter under discussion was 
Knowles's " Hunchback," of which the former 
President remarked mildly that it was " by 
no means as good as Shakespeare." 

Miss Kemble records that she " looked at 
the man in amazement, and suggested to him 
that Shakespeare did not grow upon every bush. 
Presently Mr. Adams began a sentence by 
assuring me that he was a worshipper of Shake- 
speare, and ended it by saying that Othello was 
disgusting, King Lear ludicrous, and Romeo 
and Juliet childish nonsense; whereat I swallowed 
half a pint of water and nearly my tumbler, too, 
and remained silent — for what could I say? 

However, in spite of this, I owe some 

gratitude, for he brought to see me the 

other day, whose face is more like that of a 
good and intellectual man than almost any face 
I ever saw. 

" The climate of this place is dreadful; the 
night before last the weather was so warm that, 
with my window open, I was obliged to take 
half the clothes off my bed; last night was so 

* Dr. Parkman was then living at 1 Cambridge Street. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 423. 

cold that, with window shut, and additional 
covering, I could scarce get to sleep for the cold. 
This is terrible, and forms a serious drawback 
upon the various attractions of Boston, and to 
me it has many. The houses are like English 
houses; the Common is like Constitution Hill; 
Beacon street is like a bit of Park lane, and 
Summer street, now that the chestnut trees 
are in bloom, is perfectly beautiful." 

The excessive modesty which caused Boston, 
in recent years, to refuse the " Bacchante " a 
place in the courtyard of our Public Library 
seems to have been operative at this era, also. 
When Power's " chanting cherubs " were ex- 
hibited it was found necessary to drape their 
loins with linen, and like treatment was ac- 
corded to an orang-outang which visited the 
city about the same time.^ Inasmuch, however, 
as Mrs. Trollope ^ makes repeated allusions 
to similar prudery in other cities, Bostonians 
were perhaps not so very singular in this respect. 
" I once mentioned to a young lady," this chron- 
icler of our national delinquencies writes, " that 
I thought a picnic party would be very agree- 
able, and that I would propose it to some of 
our friends. She agreed that it would be de- 
lightful, but she added, ' I fear you will not suc- 

1 McMaster's History of the United States, Vol. VI, p. 96. 

^ The American reprint of Domestic Manners of the Americans, 
put out in New York in 1832, insists that Captain Basil Hall must 
have written this book, inasmuch aa " no lady " could have done it; 



424 ROMANTIC DAYS 

ceed; we are not used to such sort of things 
here, and I know it is considered very indehcate 
for ladies and gentlemen to sit down together 
on the grass.' " But what we must conclude, of 
course, is that this feeling was as little typical of 
America as was the conduct of the woman Mrs. 
Trollope saw in a New York theatre adminis- 
tering natural nutrition to her child between 
the acts of a " thriller." Some of her criti- 
cisms were well-founded, however, and many 
of her observations highly amusing. We know 
that, in Boston, the cows grazed on the Common. 
Did they then go placidly home to be milked 
as Mrs. Trollope tells us was the custom in 
Cincinnati? " The animals there," she says, 
" are fed morning and evening at the door of 
the house, with a good mess of Indian corn 
boiled with water. While they eat they are 
milked, and when the operation is completed 
the milk-pail and meal-tub retreat into the 
dwelling leaving the republican cow to walk 
away to take her pleasure on the hills or in the 
gutters as may suit her fancy best. They gener- 
ally return very regularly to give and take the 
morning and evening meal ; though it more than 
once happened to us, before we were supplied 
by a regular milk cart, to have our jug sent 
home empty with the sad news that ' the cow 
was not come home and it is too late to look 
for her to breakfast now.' Once, I remember, 




2 a: 




DANIEL WEBSTER. 

From the ■portrait by Stuart in the possession of George Fred Williams, Dedham, Massa- 
chusetts. 
Page 415. 



I 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 425 

the good woman told us that she had over- 
slept herself, and that the cow had come and 
gone again, ' not liking, I expect to hanker 
about for nothing, poor thing.' " Verily, as Mrs. 
Trollope drolly observes, there is more than 
one way of keeping a cow. 

And there is more than one way of writing 
one's impressions of life in a foreign country. 
Literature would be much the poorer, I maintain, 
without the pages in which Mrs. Trollope has 
embalmed her emotions concerning our sins of 
omission and commission during that period 
of her visit. For it is precisely because she be- 
came immensely stirred by what she then saw 
and experienced that her book is excellent 
reading where certain other volumes — Baron 
von Raumer's, for example, — makes one ready 
for a long winter's nap. And Harriet Marti- 
neau's work, though altogether praiseworthy 
from the point of view of accuracy, is often 
very, very dull. 

It is significant to note that — different as 
were the opinions of Mrs. Trollope and Miss 
Martineau about most American customs and 
institutions — they quite agreed in resenting 
the political and social subjection of women in 
the America of this period. We have had so 
much to do in this book with women whose social 
position and intellectual gifts were of the high- 
est and whose associations were all with gentle- 



426 ROMANTIC DAYS 

men, that it is diflScult to credit the tales of 
disrespect for womanhood with which Mrs. 
Trollope's pages overflow. Yet it is very Hkely 
true that in the West — particularly on the 
steamboats ^ — she actually did see the to- 
bacco-chewing, ever-hatted, constantly-spitting 
men of whom she has so much to say. And 
these men, naturally, would be " convinced 
to the very centre of their hearts and souls that 
women were made for no other purpose than to 
fabricate sweetmeats and gingerbread, construct 
shirts, darn stockings and become mothers of 
possible presidents." 

Yet, she continues, should the women of 
America " ever discover what their power 
might be, and compare it with what it now is, 
much improvement might be hoped for. Now, 
even in Philadelphia," she insists, " women 
who are among the handsomest, the wealthiest 
and the most distinguished in the land have 
not at all that influence in society which such 
women would possess in England." And then 
she proceeds to trace with delightful humor 
a typical day in the life of one such woman: 

" This lady shall be the wife of a lawyer in 
the highest repute and practice. She had a 
very handsome house with white marble steps 

1 Miss Martineau declares that it was on a steamboat coming 
back from Chicago, that she first, and for the only time in America, 
©noountered disregard of woman. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 427 

and doorposts, and a delicate silver knocker 
and door-handle. She had very handsome 
drawing-rooms very handsomely furnished. 
There is a sideboard in one of them but it is 
very handsome, and has very handsome de- 
canters and cut glass water jugs upon it; she 
has a very handsome carriage and a very hand- 
some free black coachman; she is always very 
handsomely dressed ; and moreover, she is very 
handsome herself. 

" She rises, and her first hour is spent in 
the scrupulously nice arrangement of her dress; 
she descends to her parlour, neat, stiff and 
silent; her breakfast is brought in by her free 
black footman; she eats her fried ham and her 
salt fish, and drinks her coffee in silence, while 
her husband reads one newspaper and puts an- 
other under his elbow; and then perhaps, she 
washes the cups and saucers. Her carriage is 
ordered at eleven ; till that hour she is employed 
in the pastry-room, her snow-white apron pro- 
tecting her mouse-coloured silk. Twenty min- 
utes before her carriage should appear she re- 
tires to her chamber, as she calls it, shakes and 
folds up her still snow-white apron, smooths 
her rich dress and with nice care sets on her 
elegant bonnet, and all the handsome et cetera; 
then walks down stairs just at the moment that 
her free black coachman announces to her free 
black footman that her carriage waits. She 



428 ROMANTIC DAYS 

steps into it and gives the word, ' Drive to the 
Dorcas Society.' Her footman stays at home 
to clean the knives, but her coachman can 
trust his horses while he opens the carriage door, 
and his lady not being accustomed to a hand 
or an arm, gets out very safely without, though 
one of her own is occupied by her work-basket, 
and the other by a large roll of all those in- 
describable matters which ladies take as ofiFerings 
to Dorcas Societies. 

" She enters the parlour appropriated for 
the meeting, and finds seven other ladies, 
very like herself, and takes her place among 
them; she presents her contribution, which is 
accepted with a gentle circular smile, and her 
parings of broadcloth, her ends of riband, her 
gilt paper and her minikin pins are added to 
the parings of broadcloth, the ends of riband, 
the gilt paper and the minikin pins with which 
the table is already covered; she also produces 
from her basket three ready-made pincushions, 
four inkwipers, seven paper matches, and a 
paste-board watch-case; these are welcomed 
with acclamations and the youngest lady present 
deposits them carefully on shelves, amid a 
prodigious quantity of similar articles. She 
then produces her thimble and asks for work; 
it is presented to her and the eight ladies all 
stitch together for some hours. Their talk is 
of priests and of missions, of the profits from 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 429 

the last sale and of their hopes from the next; 
of their doubts whether young Mr. This or 
young Mr. That should receive the fruits of it 
to fit him out for Liberia; of the very ugly 
bonnet seen at church on Sabbath morning; 
of the handsome preacher who performed on 
Sabbath afternoon, and of the very large col- 
lection made on Sabbath evening. This lasts 
till three when the carriage again appears and 
the lady and her basket return home; she 
mounts to her chamber, carefully sets aside 
her bonnet and its appurtenances, puts on 
her scalloped black silk apron, walks into the 
kitchen to see that all is right, then into the par- 
lour, where having cast a careful glance over the 
table prepared for dinner, she sits down, work 
in hand, to await her spouse. He comes, shakes 
hands with her, spits and dines. The conversa- 
tion is not much then and ten minutes suflSce 
for the dinner; fruit and toddy, the newspaper 
and the work-bag succeed. In the evening, 
the gentleman, being a savant, goes to the 
Wistar Society, and afterward plays a snug 
rubber at a neighbour's. The lady receives at 
tea a young missionary and three members of 
the Dorcas Society. — And so ends her day." 
Yet at just this time Fanny Wright, wearing 
bloomers, was vigorously advocating, from the 
lecture-platform, the adoption of ideas so sub- 
versive of manners, morals and religion that, 



430 ROMANTIC DAYS 

even today, she would find it diflScult to hire 
a hall in some American cities. None the less, 
in Philadelphia, Quaker ladies sat on the plat- 
form during her lectures! And in many places 
" Fanny Wright Societies " were organized and 
the reforms she advocated seriously under- 
taken.^ Which only serves to prove that women 
stood in tremendous need of the better education 
and the broader opportunities Harriet Marti- 
neau demanded for them. 

Quite as good arguments as can be found in 
any of our feminist papers of today for 
bestowing upon women the right of suffrage 
are presented in the chapter on the " Political 
Non-Existence of Women " of Miss Martineau's 
thoughtful book. Society in America. As a 
public woman, who herself knew thoroughly 
of what she wrote, this author quotes with 
utter scorn Jefferson's dictum,^ " Were our 
state a pure democracy, in which all the inhab- 
itants should meet together to transact their 
business, there would yet be excluded from their 
deliberations (1) Infants, until arrived at years 
of discretion; (2) Slaves, from whom the un- 
fortunate state of things with us takes away the 
rights of will and of property; and (3) Women, 
who to prevent depravation of morals, and am- 

^ McMaster's History of the People of the United States, Vol. V, 
p. 99. 

2 Correspondence, Vol. IV, p. 295. 



IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC 431 

higuity of issue, could not mix promiscuously 
in public meetings of men.'' The italics are my 
own. But the sentiment was Thomas Jeffer- 
son's; and the first writer who had the cleverness 
to perceive its utter sophistry was this English- 
woman who visited Boston late in 1835. The 
fact that she made the journey to the New 
England capital by railroad, as well as the fact 
that she found considerable response in Boston 
to her advanced views, reminds me that we have 
now arrived really at the close of the period of 
the " early " Republic. 



THE END. 



INDEX 



Adams, Abigail, 42, 43, 44, 46, 

47, 48, 58, 82, 161, 166, 167. 
Adams, John, 11, 81, 102, 161, 

167, 403, 420. 
Adams, John Quincy, 200, 201, 

202, 232, 236, 403, 420, 422. 
Adams, Mrs. John Quincy, 201, 

202, 210. 
Adams, Therese Blennerhas- 

sett, 325. 
Allan, John, 353. 
Alston, Governor Joseph, 315, 

321, 323, 326, 327, 330. 
Alston, Joseph, 321, 322. 
Alston, Theodosia Burr, 313, 

314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 

320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 

326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 

332, 333, 334, 335, 337. 
Amory, Rufus, 421. 
Anderson, Larz, 415. 
Andre, Major, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 16, 

17, 19, 21. 
Arnold, Benedict, 10, 11, 13, 14, 

15, 16, 17, 18, 19. 
Arnold, Edward Shippen, 17, 

19. 
Arnold, Margaret Shippen, 1, 2, 

10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 

18. 
Astor, Henry, 78. 
Astor, John Jacob, 78, 110, 132, 

133, 134, 135. 

Bache, Sarah Franklin, 58, 59, 

60. 
Bacon, Edmund, 176. 
Balch, Thomas, 14. 
Baltimore, City of, 243-290. 
Barker, Jacob, 187. 
Barlow, Joel, 188. 
Barrett. George, 124. 



Barton, Cora Livingston, 394, 

395. 
Bayard, Mrs. John, 88. 
Bayard, William, 132. 
Beauharnais, Hortense de, 198, 

258. 
Beaumarchais, Pierre, A. C. de, 

348, 349, 350, 351, 352. 
Beekman, Mrs. James, 87. 
Beekman, John K., 132. 
Bernard, John, 359, 360, 361. 
Biddle, Mrs. Nicholas, 280. 
Bingham, WilUam, 43, 44, 46. 
Bingham, Mrs. Wilham, 43, 44, 

45, 46, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57. 
Blair, Frank, 225. 
Blair, Rev. J. D., 346, 347. 
Blake, Edward, Jr., 417. 
Blennerhassett, Harman, 324, 

325, 326. 
Bonaparte, Jerome, 109, 257, 

2.58, 259, 262, 263, 264, 265, 

266, 267, 268, 270, 272, 273 
274, 277, 280, 281, 321. 

Bonaparte, Mrs. Jerome, 189, 
190, 253, 257, 258, 259, 260. 
261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 

267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 
273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 
279, 280, 281. 

Bonaparte, Jerome Napoleon, 

275. 
Bonaparte, Joseph, 108, 109. 
Bonaparte, Lucien, 267. 
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 258, 267, 

271, 273, 274, 275, 276, 382. 
Booth, Junius Brutus, 129, 226. 
Borghese, Pauline, 258. 
Boston, Citv of, 397-431. 
Bradford, Wilham, 119. 
Breck, Samuel, 53, 56, 73, 74. 
Brewton, Miles, 293. 



434 



INDEX 



Brissot de Warville, 1, 38, 73. 
Broglie, Prince de, 57, 58. 
Brooks, John Graham, 231. 
Bryant, William Cullen, 148, 

150, 151. 
Buchanan, Rev. J., 346, 347, 

348, 353. 
Bull's Head Tavern, 123. 
Burd, Major Edward, 18. 
Burdick, Benjamin F., 333, 334. 
Burnaby, Rev. William, 144. 
Burnes, David, 156, 157. 
Burns, Robert, 185, 287. 
Burr, Aaron, 115, 116, 117, 118, 

119, 178, 314, 315, 316, 317, 

318, 320, 323, 324, 326, 327, 

328, 329, 330, 331, 333, 334, 

405. 
Burr, Rev. Thaddeus, 405. 
Burr, Theodosia Prevost, 314, 

317, 318, 320. 
Byrd, Colonel, 338. 

Cable, George Washington, 391. 
Caldwell, James H., 385. 
Calhoun, John C, 205, 208, 219, 

343. 
Campan, Madame, 197, 258. 
Carey, Matthew, 148. 
Carroll, Charles, 252, 282. 
Carroll, Archbishop John, 260, 

264, 277, 282. 
Carroll, Daniel, 282. 
Casa Yrujo, Marquis de, 52, 53. 
Castle Garden, 144, 145. 
Charleston, City of, 291-337. 
Chase, Hon. Samuel, 263. 
Chastellux, Marquis de, 36, 37, 

367, 368, 370, 371, 372, 374, 

398. 
Chestnut Street Theatre, 22, 

23, 25. 
Chevallie, Jean Auguste, 348. 
Claiborne, Governor, 381. 
Clarkson, General, 100. 
Claxton, Kate, 23. 
Clay, Henry, 252, 343. 
Clinton, De Witt, 147, 197, 267. 
CHnton, Sir Henry, 4, 5, 16. 
Cobbett, William, 155. 
Cochelet, Mademoiselle, 258. 
Cockburn, Admiral, 186, 188. 



Collins, V. Lansing, 314. 

Cone, Spencer H., 23. 

Cooke, George Frederick, 24, 

25, 26, 148. 
Cooley, Dr. E., 228, 229. 
Cooper, Thomas Apthorpe, 226. 
Cooper, Priscilla, 124, 226. 
Cooper, James Fenimore, 147, 

148, 150, 151, 152. 
Cope, Caleb, 4. 
Copley, John Singleton, 313. 
Count Johannes, 124. 
Cox, Sarah, 51. 
Craig, James, 280. 
Craigie, Mrs. Andrew, 415. 
Crowninshield, Mrs. Benjamin 

W., 193, 194, 195, 196. 
Cushman, Charlotte, 124. 
Custis, Eleanor Parke, 48, 79, 

87, 365, 367. 
Custis, George Washington 

Parke, 49, 79. 
Cutler, Dr. Manasseh, 171, 176, 

226. 
Cutts, Mrs. Richard, 184, 188. 

Dallas, Alexander J., 264. 
D'Avezac, Jules, 393. 
Dawson, Henry B., 122. 
Dayton, Abram C, 124. 
Deas, David, 292. 
Delmonico's, 144. 
D'Eon, Chevalier, 349, 350, 351. 
Depeyster, Robert G. L., 187. 
Derby, R. C, 418, 417. 
Dickens, Asbury, 50. 
Dickens, Charles, 150, 397. 
Didier, Eugene L., 262. 
Donelson, Mrs. Emily, 220, 221, 

222. 
Drake, James Rodman, 151. 
Drake, Mrs. Stella Edwards 

Pierpont, 333, 334. 
Drinker, Ehzabeth, 29, 34, 56. 
Duer, Lady Kitty, 87. 
Duff, Ann, 124. 
Dunlap, Wilham, 128. 
Dunn, Nathan, 32, 33. 
Durang, Charles, 23, 286. 

Eaton, Peggy O'Neil, 217, 218, 
219, 220. 



INDEX 



435 



Edgeworth, Honora Sneyd, 2, 3, 

15. 
Edgeworth, Maria, 2. 
Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, 2, 

15. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 118. 
Ellet, Elizabeth Fries, 95, 182, 

375, 377. 
Elhcott, Andrew, 159. 

Fenno, Charles Jones, 63, 64, 

68, 69, 70. 
Fesch, Cardinal, 259, 277. 
Fly Market, 74, 77, 78. 
Foote, Rev. William Henry, 346. 
Forrest, Edwin, 25, 26, 129. 
Foster, Sir Augustus, 175, 257. 
Francis, Dr. John W., 117, 129, 

147, 148. 
Frankhn, Benjamin, 58, 60, 61, 

95, 96, 97, 98, 102, 181, 348, 

351, 403, 407. 
Franks, Rebecca, 7, 30. 
Frankland, Sir Harry, 404, 407. 
Fraser, Charles, 300, 302, 309, 

311. 
Fraunces, Samuel, 76, 78, 80. 
Fraunces' Tavern, 74, 75, 77, 

110. 
Fulton, Robert, 119, 141, 142. 

Gallatin, Albert, 119. 
Gallego, Joseph, 348. 
Garrison, William Lloyd, 418. 
Gayarre, Charles, 332. 
Genet, " Citizen," 197. 
Gladstone, William Ewart, 158. 
Goddard, William, 243. 
Godfrey, Thomas, 20. 
Godwin, Parke, 117. 
Gore, Governor, 420. 
Gratz, Hyman, 64. 
Gratz, Rebecca, 63, 64, 65, 66, 

67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72. 
Gray don, Alexander, 21, 29. 
Greene, General Nathanael, 15, 

88. 
Griswold, Rufus W., 77. 

Hachard, Madeleine, 380. 
Hall, Captain Basil, 423. 
Hallam, Lewis, 20, 21, 22, 127. 



Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 150. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 81, 116, 

117, 119, 158, 159, 321, 324. 
Hamilton, Mrs. Alexander, 88. 
Hancock, Dorothy Quincy, 404, 

405, 406. 
Hancock, John, 404, 405, 406. 
Hancock, Mme. Lydia, 405. 
Hart, Mrs. Tudor, 65, 69, 71. 
Hay, Eliza Monroe, 197, 198. 
Hayne, Colonel, 294, 295, 296. 
Hazen, Charles Downer, 102. 
Henry, Patrick, 338, 339. 
Heyward, Thomas, 299. 
Hillegas, Michael, 36. 
Hodgkinson, Thomas, 146. 
Hoffman, Matilda, 63, 64, 136, 

137, 139. 
Holladay, Alexander Quarles, 

335. 
Hone, Philip, 117, 144, 398, 419, 

420. 
Howe, Sir Wilham, 4, 5, 9, 11. 

29. > > > y 

Huger, Francis Kinloch, 304, 

305, 306. 
Humphreys, Col., 79. 
Huntington, Daniel, 87. 

Irving, Washington, 18, 63, 65, 
71, 72, 123, 136, 137, 139, 150, 
184, 185, 252, 341, 342, 365, 
378. 

Izard, Ralph, 298, 307, 313. 

Izard, Mrs. Ralph, 87. 

Jackson, Andrew, 146, 201, 210, 
211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 
217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 
223, 239, 240, 380, 381, 382, 
383, 384, 393, 394. 

Jackson, Mrs. Andrew, 213, 214, 
215, 216, 217, 218, 219. 

Jackson, Elizabeth Willing, 47. 

Jackson, Major, 86. 

Jackson, Stonewall, 377. 

Jay, John, 82, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 

100, 152. 

Jay, Mrs. John, 82, 94, 95, 96, 

97, 98, 99, 100, 101. 
Jav, Peter Augustus, 99, 100, 

101, 102, 103. 



436 



INDEX 



Jefferson, Joseph, 23, 306. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 54, 55, 56, 

78, 157, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 

173, 174, 175, 176, 179, 180, 

181, 224, 339, 372, 373, 374, 

375, 430, 431. 
Jumel, Madame, 110, 111, 112, 

113, 114, 115, 116, 117. 
Jumel Mansion, 110, 112, 114, 

115. 
Jumel, Stephen, 110, HI, 112, 

113, 114, 115. 
Junot, Madame, 273. 

Kean, Charles, 129. 
Kean, Edmund, 26, 27. 
Kemble, Charles, 27, 129, 251. 
Kemble, Frances Anne, 27, 130, 

251, 254, 398, 421, 422. 
Kennedy, John P., 248, 256. 
Kent, Duke of, 88. 
Key, Francis Scott, 187, 284, 

285, 286. 
King, Charles, 224. 
Knox, General Henry, 75, 362. 

Lafayette, 95, 144, 145, 146, 193, 

304, 305, 306, 355, 356, 407, 

413, 416. 
Lafayette, George Washington, 

356. 
L'Age, Natalie, 319. 
Lamb, Charles, 315. 
Langdon, Gov. John, 82, 401. 
Lassy, Moreau de, 393. 
Law, Anne Custis, 165. 
Lear, Tobias, 81. 
Le Camus, Alexander, 265, 269, 

273. 
Lee, Arthur, 351, 352. 
Lee, General Robert E., 377. 
Leland, Elder, 170, 171, 172. 
L'Enfant, Pierre Charles, 157, 

159. 
Lewis, Lawrence, 364, 365. 
Livingston, Edward, 393, 394. 
■Livingston, Mrs. Edward, 207, 

221, 392, 393, 394. 
Livingston, Robert R., 141, 142, 

266. 
Livingston, Mrs. Robert R., 87. 
Livingston, Mrs. Walter, 87. 



Lomenie, Louis Leonard de, 349. 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 

407, 411, 412, 413, 414. 
Longfellow, Stephen, 410, 412. 
Lyman, General Theodore, 420. 
Louis Philippe, 107, 108, 356. 

Maclay, William, 81, 82, 84, 85, 

149. 
Macready, William C, 129, 226. 
Madison, James, 158, 178, 181, 

183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 

189, 192, 196. 

Madison, Mrs. James, 175, 176, 
177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 183, 

184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 

190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 
329. 

Malbone, Edward Greene, 65, 

417. 
Malibran, Eugene, 130. 
Malibran, Madame, 130. 
Marshall, Chief Justice, 326, 

342 343 
Marshall, Emily, 417, 418. 
Marshall, Josiah, 417. 
Martin, Luther, 326. 
Martineau, Harriet, 229, 231, 

232, 425, 426, 430. 
Mason, George, 339. 
Mather, Cotton, 148. 
Mathews, Charles, 25, 129, 132. 
Mayo, Colonel John, 339, 340. 
McClenachen, Blair, 57. 
McHenry, Fort, 284, 285, 286. 
McHenry, James, 363. 
Mclvers, Mary, 86. 
McKean, Chief Justice, 53. 
McKean, Sally, 47. 
McMaster, John Bach, 423, 430. 
Michelet, Jules, 379. 
Monroe, James, 196, 197, 198, 

307. 
Monroe, Mrs. James, 197, 198, 

199, 200, 201. 
Montagu, Lord Charles Gre- 

ville, 292. 
Montgomery, General, 3, 4. 
Moore, Bishop, 100, 101. 
Moore, Thomas, 179, 180. 
Morris, Gouverneur, |107, 108, 

163. 



INDEX 



437 



Morris, Robert, 46, 56, 81. 
Morris, Mrs. Robert, 56, 57, 82, 

94. 
Morris, Roger, 110. 
Moses, Rachel Gratz, 71. 
Moultrie, General, 297, 310. 
Mount Vernon, 89, 90, 360, 361, 

364, 367, 403. 
Murat, Achille, 291. 

Newburyport, City of, 401, 402. 
New Orleans, City of, 379-396. 
New Rochelle, 155. 
New York, City of, 73-155. 
Noailles, Viscount de, 46. 
Nuttall, Thomas, 62. 

Orleans, Duke of, 88. 
Otis, H. G., 419. 
Overman, Anna, 337. 

Paine, Thomas, 151, 152, 153, 

154, 155, 180. 
Pakenham, Sir Edward, 382. 
Parkman, Dr. George, 422. 
Parton, James, 213, 314, 320. 
Patterson, Robert, 253. 
Patterson, William, 260, 261, 

263, 264, 266, 269, 271, 281. 
Paulding, James Kirke, 150. 
Payne, John Howard, 23, 151, 

187, 188. 
Peale, Anna C, 223. 
Peale, Charles Wilson, 32. 
Penn, Richard, 46, 56. 
Philadelphia, City of, 1-72. 
Philipse, Mary, 110. 
Pidgin, Charles Felton, 328, 337. 
Pierce, Anne Longfellow, 411. 
Pinckney, General Charles 

Cotesworth, 301, 304, 307. 
Pitti Palace, 281. 
Poe, David, 23. 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 150, 286, 287, 

288, 289, 290, 352, 353, 354. 
Poe, Elizabeth Arnold, 22, 23. 
Poinsett, Joel Roberts, 308, 309. 
Pool, Bettie F., 335. 
Pool, Dr. William C, 335, 336, 

337. 
Pope Pius VII, 276, 277, 282. 



Porter, Sarah Harvey, 233, 234, 

239 
Portland, 407, 408, 411, 413, 

414. 
Portsmouth, 401. 
Potter, Rev. Alonzo, 420. 
Preston, WiUiam C, 182, 183. 
Priest, William, 31, 62. 

Quincy, City of, 402, 403, 404, 

405, 406, 420. 
Quincy, President Josiah, 203, 

417, 419. 
Quincy, Josiah, 204, 205, 206, 

207, 208, 212, 395, 415, 417. 
Quincy, Josiah (on Charleston), 

291, 292, 293, 307, 321, 417. 

Randel, John, 154. 
Randolph, Edmund, 153, 355. 
Randolph, John, 354, 394. 
Randolph, Martha Jefferson, 

355. 
Randolph, Peyton, 355. 
Randolph, Thomas Mann, 169, 

355. 
R6camier, Madame, 258. 
Richmond, City of, 338-356. 
Robards, Lewis, 215. 
Robespierre, Maximilien Isidore 

Frangois Marie, 105. 
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Duke 

de, 37, 54, 302, 356, 357. 
Rowson, Susanna Haswell, 120, 

121, 122. 
Royall, Anne, 232, 233, 234, 235, 

236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241. 
Rutherfurd, Hon. John, 102. 
Rutledge, Chief Justice, 299 . 

Saffel, W. T. R., 261, 271. 
Saxe-Weimar, Duke of, 384, 

385, 390. 
Scott, Maria Mayo, 340. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 63, 71. 
Scott, General Winfield, 340. 
Searle, John, 132. 
Sears, Lorenzo, 406. 
Seaton, Mrs. William Winston, 

189, 190, 191, 192, 200, 226. 
Shakespeare Tavern, 146. 
Shiel, Richard Lalor, 253. 



438 



INDEX 



Shippen, Edward, 14, 28. 
Simpson, Edmund, 128. 
Smith, John Cotton, 160. 
Smith, Samuel Harrison, 224. 
Smith, Mrs. Samuel Harrison, 

172, 189, 192, 210, 229, 232. 
Souder, Casper, 33. 
Southwark Theatre, 20, 21, 22, 

23. 
Spofford, Ainsworth R., 242. 
Stael, Madame de, 280. 
" Star Spangled Banner," 284, 

286. 
Stewart, Mrs. Walter, 57. 
Stevens, Col. John, 142. 
Stoker, Bram, 350. 
Story, Judge, 203. 
Stuart, Gilbert, 187. 
Sully, Thomas, 65, 337. 
Surriage, Agnes, 404. 

Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles 

Maurice de, 54, 105, 106, 107, 

266, 280, 321. 
Talmadge, Col. Benjamin, 75. 
Tammany Hall, 149, 150. 
Tarbell, Ida, 240. 
Tayloe, Colonel John, 188. 
Temple, Charlotte, 119, 120, 

121, 122. 
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 

375. 
Tillett, Mrs. Joseph, 336, 337. 
Todd, John Payne, 177. 
Tracy, John, 402. 
Trinity Church, 119, 121. 
Trist N. P. 223. 
TroUope, Mrs. Frances, 31, 222, 

244, 282, 284, 387, 389, 390, 

423, 424, 425, 426. 
Tudor, Mrs. William, 400. 

United States Gazette, 49. 
Upton, Robert, 126. 

Van Buren, Martin, 219. 
Van Cleef, Augustus, 287. 
Vane, Sir Harry, 403. 
Van Rensselaer, Gratz, 72. 
Vergennes, Count de, 349, 350. 



Wadsworth, General Peleg, 408, 
410, 411. 

Walker, Alexander, 382. 

Walnut Street Theatre, 25, 26. 

Wansey, Henry, 48, 49, 103. 

Ward, Maria, 354, 355. 

Warner, Charles Dudley, 389. 

Warren, Mercy, 88. 

Washington, City of, 156-242. 

Washington, General George, 
36, 40, 41, 46, 48, 49, 50, 75, 
77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 

86, 90, 156, 159, 160, 299, 300, 
356, 359, 361, 362, 363, 364, 
365, 367, 370, 407. 

Washington, Mrs. Fann)^, 89. 
Washington, Lund, 89. 
Washington, Martha, 48, 49, 
51, 57, 60, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 

87, 88, 89, 178, 265, 359, 365. 
Watson, Elkanah, 143, 146. 
Watson, J. F., 28. 

Wayne, General, 9. 

Webster, Daniel, 148, 205, 206, 

252, 415, 416. 
Weld, Isaac, 51. 
West, Benjamin, 29, 141. 
Wharton, Anne Hollingsworth, 

102. 
Wharton, Joseph, 6. 
Wheaton, Henry, 148. 
White, Mrs. Florida, 206, 207. 
White, Richard Grant, 104. 
Whitman, Elizabeth, 188. 
Wilkes, John, 351. 
Wilson, James Grant, 150. 
Wilson, Rufus Rockwell, 105, 

109. 
WilHng, Thomas, 43. 
Wilmer, Delia Tudor, 65. 
Wingate, Judge, 90. 
Wistar, Dr. Caspar, 61, 62, 307. 
Wolcott, Oliver, 163, 165, 363. 
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 318, 320. 
AV'oodberry, George Edward, 

353. 
Wright, Fanny, 415, 429, 430. 

Young, William, 63. 



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